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Our ancestor was an animal which breathed water, had a swim-bladder, a great swimming tail, an imperfect skull & undoubtedly was an hermaphrodite! Here is a pleasant genealogy for mankind.

Charles Darwin

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Charles Darwin
Age: 73 †
Born: 1809
Born: February 12
Died: 1882
Died: April 19
Beekeeper
Botanist
Carcinologist
Entomologist
Ethologist
Explorer
Geologist
Naturalist
Philosopher
Travel Writer
The Mount
Shrewsbury
Charles Robert Darwin
Charles R. Darwin
Darwin
Pleasant
Undoubtedly
Evolution
Skulls
Mankind
Tail
Hermaphrodite
Animal
Tails
Hermaphrodites
Water
Ancestor
Genealogy
Science
Swimming
Bladder
Great
Imperfect
Breathed
Swim
Skull

More quotes by Charles Darwin

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But then with me the horrid doubt always arises whether the convictions of man's mind, which has been developed from the mind of the lower animals, are of any value or at all trustworthy. Would any one trust in the convictions of a monkey's mind, if there are any convictions in such a mind?
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I always make special notes about evidence that contridicts me: supportive evidence I can remember without trying.
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I think it inevitably follows, that as new species in the course of time are formed through natural selection, others will become rarer and rarer, and finally extinct. The forms which stand in closest competition with those undergoing modification and improvement will naturally suffer most.
Charles Darwin
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Hence, a traveller should be a botanist, for in all views plants form the chief embellishment.
Charles Darwin
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A cell is a complex structure, with its investing membrane, nucleus, and nucleolus.
Charles Darwin
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Nothing can be more hopeless than to attempt to explain this similarity of pattern in members of the same class, by utility or by the doctrine of final causes.
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Much love much trial, but what an utter desert is life without love.
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Your words have come true with a vengeance that I shd [should] be forestalled ... I never saw a more striking coincidence. If Wallace had my M.S. sketch written out in 1842 he could not have made a better short abstract! Even his terms now stand as Heads of my Chapters.
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A grand and almost untrodden field of inquiry will be opened, on the causes and laws of variation, on correlation of growth, on the effects of use and disuse, on the direct actions of external conditions, and so forth.
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It seems to me absurd to doubt that a man may be an ardent Theist and an evolutionist. ... I have never been an atheist in the sense of denying the existence of a God.
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I was a young man with uninformed ideas. I threw out queries, suggestions, wondering all the time over everything and to my astonishment the ideas took like wildfire. People made a religion of them.
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I have deeply regretted that I did not proceed far enough at least to understand something of the great leading principles of mathematics, for men thus endowed seem to have an extra sense.
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The school as a means of education to me was simply a blank.
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The impossibility of conceiving that this grand and wondrous universe, with our conscious selves, arose through chance, seems to me the chief argument for the existence of God.
Charles Darwin
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The fact of evolution is the backbone of biology, and biology is thus in the peculiar position of being a science founded on an improved theory, is it then a science or faith?
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The love of a dog for his master is notorious in the agony of death he has been known to caress his master, and everyone has heard of the dog suffering under vivisection, who licked the hand of the operator this man, unless he had a heart of stone, must have felt remorse to the last hour of his life.
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If I had not been so great an invalid, I should not have done so much as I have accomplished.
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The age-old and noble thought of 'I will lay down my life to save another,' is nothing more than cowardice.
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I am aware that the assumed instinctive belief in God has been used by many persons as an argument for his existence. The idea of a universal and beneficent Creator does not seem to arise in the mind of man, until he has been elevated by long-continued culture.
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Our descent, then, is the origin of our evil passions!! The devil under form of Baboon is our grandfather.
Charles Darwin