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It has sometimes been said that the success of the Origin proved that the subject was in the air, or that men's minds were prepared for it. I do not think that this is strictly true, for I occasionally sounded not a few naturalists, and never happened to come across a single one who seemed to doubt about the permanence of species.

Charles Darwin

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Charles Darwin
Age: 73 †
Born: 1809
Born: February 12
Died: 1882
Died: April 19
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The Mount
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Charles Robert Darwin
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More quotes by Charles Darwin

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As natural selection works solely by and for the good of each being, all corporeal and mental endowments will tend to progress toward perfection.
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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 love for all living creatures is the most noble attribute of man.
Charles Darwin
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Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, and not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science.
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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
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It strikes me that all our knowledge about the structure of our Earth is very much like what an old hen would know of the hundred-acre field in a corner of which she is scratching.
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I never gave up Christianity until I was forty years of age.
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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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I would give absolutely nothing for the theory of Natural Selection, if it requires miraculous additions at any one stage of descent.
Charles Darwin
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Hence, a traveller should be a botanist, for in all views plants form the chief embellishment.
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Delight itself, however, is a weak term to express the feelings of a naturalist.
Charles Darwin
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A language, like a species, when extinct, never... reappears.
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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We will now discuss in a little more detail the Struggle for Existence.
Charles Darwin
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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.
Charles Darwin
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It is always advisable to perceive clearly our ignorance.
Charles Darwin
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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.
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I have long discovered that geologists never read each other's works, and that the only object in writing a book is a proof of earnestness.
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The chief distinction in the intellectual powers of the two sexes is shown by mans attaining to a higher eminence, in whatever he takes up, than the woman. Whether deep thought, reason, or imagination or merely the use of the senses and hands.....We may also infer.....The average mental power in man must be above that of woman.
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You ask about my opinion on vivisection. I quite agree that it is justifiable for real investigations on physiology but not for mere damnable and detestable curiosity.
Charles Darwin