Quote

This preservation of favourable variations and the destruction of injurious variations, I call Natural Selection, or the Survival of the Fittest. Variations neither useful nor injurious would not be affected by natural selection and would be left a fluctuating element.

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
Science
Useful
Injurious
Left
Survival
Fittest
Would
Destruction
Variations
Evolution
Variation
Neither
Preservation
Elements
Selection
Call
Element
Fluctuating
Natural
Affected
Favourable

More quotes by Charles Darwin

Image
...conscience looks backwards and judges past actions, inducing that kind of dissatisfaction, which if weak we call regret, and if severe remorse.
Charles Darwin
Image
The tree of life should perhaps be called the coral of life, base of branches dead so that passages cannot be seen-this again offers contradiction to constant succession of germs in progress.
Charles Darwin
Image
False facts are highly injurious to the progress of science, for they often endure long but false views, if supported by some evidence, do little harm, for every one takes a salutary pleasure in proving their falseness.
Charles Darwin
Image
The survival or preservation of certain favoured words in the struggle for existence is natural selection.
Charles Darwin
Image
The earthquake, however, must be to every one a most impressive event: the earth, considered from our earliest childhood as the type of solidity, has oscillated like a thin crust beneath our feet and in seeing the laboured works of man in a moment overthrown, we feel the insignificance of his boasted power.
Charles Darwin
Image
My mind seems to have become a kind of machine for grinding general laws out of large collections of facts.
Charles Darwin
Image
Every new body of discovery is mathematical in form, because there is no other guidance we can have.
Charles Darwin
Image
What wretched doings come from the ardor of fame the love of truth alone would never make one man attack another bitterly.
Charles Darwin
Image
It at once struck me that under these circumstances favourable variations would tend to be preserved, and unfavourable ones to be destroyed.
Charles Darwin
Image
It is a cursed evil to any man to become as absorbed in any subject as I am in mine.
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
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.
Charles Darwin
Image
I always make special notes about evidence that contridicts me: supportive evidence I can remember without trying.
Charles Darwin
Image
One general law, leading to the advancement of all organic beings, namely, multiply, vary, let the strongest live and the weakest die.
Charles Darwin
Image
I ought, or I ought not, constitute the whole of morality.
Charles Darwin
Image
Life is nearly over with me. I have taken no pains about my style of writing.
Charles Darwin
Image
I am dying by inches, from not having any body to talk to about insects.
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
Hereafter we shall be compelled to acknowledge that the only distinction between species and well-marked varieties is, that the latter are known, or believed to be connected at the present day by intermediate gradations whereas species were formerly thus connected.
Charles Darwin
Image
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.
Charles Darwin