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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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On the ordinary view of each species having been independently created, we gain no scientific explanation.
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I shall always feel respect for every one who has written a book, let it be what it may, for I had no idea of the trouble which trying to write common English could cost one—And alas there yet remains the worst part of all correcting the press.
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...I feel most deeply that the whole subject is too profound for the human intellect. A dog might as well speculate on the mind of Newton.— Let each man hope & believe what he can.—
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Language is an art, like brewing or baking.... It certainly is not a true instinct, for every language has to be learnt.
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A grain in the balance will determine which individual shall live and which shall die - which variety or species shall increase in number, and which shall decrease, or finally become extinct.
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The survival or preservation of certain favoured words in the struggle for existence is natural selection.
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Every new body of discovery is mathematical in form, because there is no other guidance we can have.
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Great is the power of steady misrepresentation but the history of science shows that fortunately this power does not long endure.
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I think it can be shown that there is such an unerring power at work in Natural Selection, which selects exclusively for the good of each organic being.
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Nature will tell you a direct lie if she can.
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We are not here concerned with hopes or fears, only with truth as far as our reason permits us to discover it.
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A bad earthquake at once destroys the oldest associations: the world, the very emblem of all that is solid, has moved beneath our feet like a crust over a fluid one second of time has conveyed to the mind a strange idea of insecurity, which hours of reflection would never have created.
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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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I ought, or I ought not, constitute the whole of morality.
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Not one change of species into another is on record ... we cannot prove that a single species has been changed.
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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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We thus learn that man is descended from a hairy quadruped, furnished with a tail and pointed ears, probably arboreal in its habits, and an inhabitant of the Old World.
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We feel surprise when travellers tell us of the vast dimensions of the Pyramids and other great ruins, but how utterly insignificant are the greatest of these, when compared to these mountains of stone accumulated by the agency of various minute and tender animals!
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A surprising number [of novels] have been read aloud to me, and I like all if moderately good, and if they do not end unhappily-against which a law ought to be passed.
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Progress has been much more general than retrogression
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