Quote

Seeing this gradation and diversity of structure in one small, intimately related group of birds, one might really fancy that from an original paucity of birds in this archipelago, one species had been taken and modified for different ends.

Charles Darwin

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Small
Diversity
Paucity
Taken
Group
Modified
Science
Structure
Intimately
Ends
Bird
Birds
Might
Species
Fancy
Different
Evolution
Related
Really
Groups
Originals
Archipelago
Seeing
Original
Gradation

More quotes by Charles Darwin

Image
The most energetic workers I have encountered in my world travels are the vegetarian miners of Chile.
Charles Darwin
Image
Progress has been much more general than retrogression
Charles Darwin
Image
Man, wonderful man, must collapse, into nature's cauldron, he is no deity, he is no exception.
Charles Darwin
Image
When it was first said that the sun stood still and world turned round, the common sense of mankind declared the doctrine false but the old saying of Vox populi, vox Dei [the voice of the people is the voice of God], as every philosopher knows, cannot be trusted in science.
Charles Darwin
Image
Formerly Milton's Paradise Lost had been my chief favourite, and in my excursions during the voyage of the Beagle, when I could take only a single small volume, I always chose Milton.
Charles Darwin
Image
Our descent, then, is the origin of our evil passions!! The devil under form of Baboon is our grandfather.
Charles Darwin
Image
I ought, or I ought not, constitute the whole of morality.
Charles Darwin
Image
A man who has no assured and ever present belief in the existence of a personal God or of a future existence with retribution and reward, can have for his rule of life, as far as I can see, only to follow those impulses and instincts which are the strongest or which seem to him the best ones
Charles Darwin
Image
It is absurd to talk of one animal being higher than another...we consider those, where the intellectual faculties most developed as the highest. - A bee doubtless would [use] ... instincts as a criteria.
Charles Darwin
Image
Till facts are grouped & called there can be no prediction. The only advantage of discovering laws is to foretell what will happen & to see bearing of scattered facts.
Charles Darwin
Image
In my most extreme fluctuations I have never been an atheist in the sense of denying the existence of a God ... I think that generally (& more and more so as I grow older) but not always, that an agnostic would be the most correct description of my state of mind.
Charles Darwin
Image
A man who dares to waste one hour of time has not discovered the value of life.
Charles Darwin
Image
Not one change of species into another is on record ... we cannot prove that a single species has been changed.
Charles Darwin
Image
It's not the strongest, but the most adaptable that survive.
Charles Darwin
Image
If I had my life to live over again, I would have made a rule to read some poetry and listen to some music at least once every week.
Charles Darwin
Image
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
Image
Man is developed from an ovule, about 125th of an inch in diameter, which differs in no respect from the ovules of other animals.
Charles Darwin
Image
Even the humblest mammal's strong sexual, parental, and social instincts give rise to 'do unto others as yourself' and 'love thy neighbor as thyself'.
Charles Darwin
Image
Delight itself, however, is a weak term to express the feelings of a naturalist.
Charles Darwin
Image
People complain of the unequal distribution of wealth [but it is a far greater] injustice that any one man should have the power to write so many brilliant essays... There is no one who writes like [Thomas Huxley].
Charles Darwin