Quote

The most important factor in survival is neither intelligence nor strength but adaptability.

Charles Darwin

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Charles Darwin
Age: 73 †
Born: 1809
Born: February 12
Died: 1882
Died: April 19
Beekeeper
Botanist
Carcinologist
Entomologist
Ethologist
Explorer
Geologist
Naturalist
Philosopher
Travel Writer
The Mount
Shrewsbury
Charles Robert Darwin
Charles R. Darwin
Darwin
Factors
Survival
Intelligence
Neither
Strength
Important
Adaptability
Factor

More quotes by Charles Darwin

Image
I believe we were all glad to leave New Zealand. It is not a pleasant place. Amongst the natives there is absent that charming simplicity .... and the greater part of the English are the very refuse of society.
Charles Darwin
Image
The more efficient causes of progress seem to consist of a good education during youth whilst the brain is impressible, and of a high standard of excellence, inculcated by the ablest and best men, embodied in the laws, customs and traditions of the nation, and enforced by public opinion.
Charles Darwin
Image
Nothing before had ever made me thoroughly realise, though I had read various scientific books, that science consists in grouping facts so that general laws or conclusions may be drawn from them.
Charles Darwin
Image
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
Image
There is a grandeur in this view of life, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful are being evolved
Charles Darwin
Image
I have been speculating last night what makes a man a discoverer of undiscovered things and a most perplexing problem it is. Many men who are very clever - much cleverer than the discoverers - never originate anything.
Charles Darwin
Image
One general law, leading to the advancement of all organic beings, namely, multiply, vary, let the strongest live and the weakest die.
Charles Darwin
Image
...for the shield may be as important for victory, as the sword or spear.
Charles Darwin
Image
And hail their queen, fair regent of the night.
Charles Darwin
Image
But I own that I cannot see as plainly as others do, and I should wish to do, evidence of design and beneficence on all sides of us. There seems to me too much misery in the world. I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent and omnipotent God would have designedly created that a cat should play with mice.
Charles Darwin
Image
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?
Charles Darwin
Image
I often had to run very quickly to be on time, and from being a fleet runner was generally successful but when in doubt I prayed earnestly to God to help me, and I well remember that I attributed my success to the prayers and not to my quick running, and marvelled how generally I was aided.
Charles Darwin
Image
When it was first said that the sun stood still and world turned round, the common sense of mankind declared the doctrine false but the old saying of Vox populi, vox Dei [the voice of the people is the voice of God], as every philosopher knows, cannot be trusted in science.
Charles Darwin
Image
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
Image
But when on shore, & wandering in the sublime forests, surrounded by views more gorgeous than even Claude ever imagined, I enjoy a delight which none but those who have experienced it can understand.
Charles Darwin
Image
Such simple instincts as bees making a beehive could be sufficient to overthrow my whole theory.
Charles Darwin
Image
Man selects only for his own good: Nature only for that of the being which she tends.
Charles Darwin
Image
In regard to the amount of difference between the races, we must make some allowance for our nice powers of discrimination gained by a long habit of observing ourselves.
Charles Darwin
Image
He who is not content to look, like a savage, at the phenomena of nature as disconnected, cannot any longer believe that man is the work of a separate act of creation ... Man is the co-descendant with other mammals of a common progenitor.
Charles Darwin
Image
The lower animals, like man, manifestly feel pleasure and pain, happiness and misery. Happiness is never better exhibited than by young animals, such as puppies, kittens, lambs, &c., when playing together, like our own children.
Charles Darwin