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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

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Charles Darwin
Age: 73 †
Born: 1809
Born: February 12
Died: 1882
Died: April 19
Beekeeper
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Carcinologist
Entomologist
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Explorer
Geologist
Naturalist
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The Mount
Shrewsbury
Charles Robert Darwin
Charles R. Darwin
Darwin
Science
Useful
Injurious
Left
Survival
Fittest
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Destruction
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Evolution
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Preservation
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Selection
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Element
Fluctuating
Natural
Affected
Favourable

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Blushing is the most peculiar and the most human of all expressions. Monkeys redden from passion, but it would require an overwhelming amount of evidence to make us believe that any animal could blush.
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The formation of different languages and of distinct species and the proofs that both have been developed through a gradual process, are curiously parallel.
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What can be more curious than that the hand of a man, formed for grasping, that of a mole for digging, the leg of the horse, the paddle of the porpoise, and the wing of the bat, should all be constructed on the same pattern?
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The most energetic workers I have encountered in my world travels are the vegetarian miners of Chile.
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To suppose that the eye could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest possible degree
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At some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilized races of man will almost certainly exterminate, and replace the savage races throughout the world.
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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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That there is much suffering in the world no one disputes. Which is more likely, that pain and evil are the result of an all-powerful and good God, or the product of uncaring natural forces? The presence of much suffering agrees well with the view that all organic beings have been developed through variation and natural selection.
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I have steadily endeavored to keep my mind free so as to give up any hypothesis, however much beloved (and I cannot resist forming one on every subject), as soon as the facts are shown to be opposed to it.
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Some call it evolution, And others call it God.
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To kill an error is as good a service as, and sometimes even better than, the establishing of a new truth or fact.
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He who understands baboon would do more towards metaphysics than Locke.
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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 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.
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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.
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It is impossible to concieve of this immense and wonderful universe as the result of blind chance or necessity.
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A cell is a complex structure, with its investing membrane, nucleus, and nucleolus.
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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.
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Blushing is the most peculiar and most human of all expressions.
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Farewell Australia! You ... are too great and ambitious for affection, yet not great enough for respect. I leave your shores without sorrow or regret.
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