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Man in his arrogance thinks himself a great work, worthy the interposition of a great deity. More humble and I believe true to consider him created from animals.

Charles Darwin

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Charles Darwin
Age: 73 †
Born: 1809
Born: February 12
Died: 1882
Died: April 19
Beekeeper
Botanist
Carcinologist
Entomologist
Ethologist
Explorer
Geologist
Naturalist
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The Mount
Shrewsbury
Charles Robert Darwin
Charles R. Darwin
Darwin
Animal
Arrogance
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Humble
True
Worthy
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Interposition
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Atheism
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Deities

More quotes by Charles Darwin

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Often a cold shudder has run through me, and I have asked myself whether I may have not devoted myself to a fantasy.
Charles Darwin
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During my second year at Edinburgh [1826-27] I attended Jameson's lectures on Geology and Zoology, but they were incredible dull. The sole effect they produced on me was the determination never as long as I lived to read a book on Geology.
Charles Darwin
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The traveler may feel assured, he will meet with no difficulties or dangers, excepting in rare cases, nearly so bad as he beforehand anticipates. In a moral point of view, the effect ought to be, to teach him good-humored patience, freedom from selfishness, the habit of acting for himself, and of making the best of every occurrence.
Charles Darwin
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...conscience looks backwards and judges past actions, inducing that kind of dissatisfaction, which if weak we call regret, and if severe remorse.
Charles Darwin
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When the sexes differ in beauty, in the power of singing, or in producing what I have called instrumental music, it is almost invariably the male which excels the female.
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.
Charles Darwin
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Natural selection acts solely by accumulating slight successive favorable variations, it can produce no great or sudden modification it can act only by very short steps.
Charles Darwin
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The season of love is that of battle. The roots of these fights run deep.
Charles Darwin
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I fully subscribe to the judgement of those writers who maintain that of all the differences between man and the lower animal, the moral sense of conscience is by far the most important....It is the most noble of all the attributes of man.
Charles Darwin
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It appears to me (whether rightly or wrongly) that direct arguments against Christianity and theism produce hardly any effect on the public and freedom of thought is best promoted by the gradual illumination of men's minds, which follows from the advance of science.
Charles Darwin
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Even when we are quite alone, how often do we think with pleasure or pain of what others think of us - of their imagined approbation or disapprobation.
Charles Darwin
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It occurred to me, in 1837, that something might perhaps be made of this question (the origin of the species) by patiently accumulating and reflecting on all sorts of facts which could possibly have any bearing on it
Charles Darwin
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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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A man who dares to waste one hour of time has not discovered the value of life.
Charles Darwin
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Seeing this gradation and diversity of structure in one small, intimately related group of birds, one might really fancy that from an original paucity of birds in this archipelago, one species had been taken and modified for different ends.
Charles Darwin
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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.
Charles Darwin
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It is no valid objection that science as yet throws no light on the far higher problem of the essence or origin of life. Who can explain gravity? No one now objects to following out the results consequent on this unknown element of attraction.
Charles Darwin
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One general law, leading to the advancement of all organic beings, namely, multiply, vary, let the strongest live and the weakest die.
Charles Darwin
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On the ordinary view of each species having been independently created, we gain no scientific explanation.
Charles Darwin
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To my deep mortification my father once said to me, You care for nothing but shooting, dogs, and rat-catching, and you will be a disgrace to yourself and all your family.
Charles Darwin