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...one doubts existence of free will [because] every action determined by heredity, constitution, example of others or teaching of others. This view should teach one profound humility, one deserves no credit for anything...nor ought one to blame others.

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
Philosopher
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The Mount
Shrewsbury
Charles Robert Darwin
Charles R. Darwin
Darwin
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Determined
Others
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More quotes by Charles Darwin

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It may be doubted that there are many other animals which have played so important a part in the history of the world as have these lowly organized creatures.
Charles Darwin
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Not one change of species into another is on record ... we cannot prove that a single species has been changed.
Charles Darwin
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There are several other sources of enjoyment in a long voyage, which are of a more reasonable nature. The map of the world ceases to be a blank it becomes a picture full of the most varied and animated figures.
Charles Darwin
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Every new body of discovery is mathematical in form, because there is no other guidance we can have.
Charles Darwin
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The most energetic workers I have encountered in my world travels are the vegetarian miners of Chile.
Charles Darwin
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I never gave up Christianity until I was forty years of age.
Charles Darwin
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My books have sold largely in England, have been translated into many languages, and passed through several editions in foreign countries. I have heard it said that the success of a work abroad is the best test of its enduring value. I doubt whether this is at all trustworthy but judged by this standard my name ought to last for a few years.
Charles Darwin
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I am actually weary of telling people that I do not pretend to adduce [direct] evidence of one species changing into another, but I believe that this view is in the main correct, because so many phenomena can thus be grouped end explained.
Charles Darwin
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It at once struck me that under these circumstances favourable variations would tend to be preserved, and unfavourable ones to be destroyed.
Charles Darwin
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It is a cursed evil to any man to become as absorbed in any subject as I am in mine.
Charles Darwin
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We may confidently come to the conclusion, that the forces which slowly and by little starts uplift continents, and that those which at successive periods pour forth volcanic matter from open orifices, are identical.
Charles Darwin
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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.
Charles Darwin
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With highly civilised nations continued progress depends in a subordinate degree on natural selection for such nations do not supplant and exterminate one another as do savage tribes.
Charles Darwin
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If I had life to live over again, I would give my life to poetry, to music, to literature, and to art to make life richer and happier. In my youth I steeled myself against them and thought them so much waste.
Charles Darwin
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Such simple instincts as bees making a beehive could be sufficient to overthrow my whole theory.
Charles Darwin
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From my early youth I have had the strongest desire to understand or explain whatever I observed. ... To group all facts under some general laws.
Charles Darwin
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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.
Charles Darwin
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Some few, and I am one of them, even wish to God, though at the loss of millions of lives, that the North would proclaim a crusade against slavery. In the long-run, a million horrid deaths would be amply repaid in the cause of humanity. Great God! how I should like to see the greatest curse on earth - slavery - abolished!
Charles Darwin
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Any one whose disposition leads him to attach more weight to unexplained difficulties than to the explanation of facts will certainly reject my theory.
Charles Darwin
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Life is nearly over with me. I have taken no pains about my style of writing.
Charles Darwin