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
Intelligence
Neither
Strength
Important
Adaptability
Factor
Factors
Survival

More quotes by 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
Image
...conscience looks backwards and judges past actions, inducing that kind of dissatisfaction, which if weak we call regret, and if severe remorse.
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
Wherever the European has trod, death seems to pursue the aboriginal.
Charles Darwin
Image
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
Image
To suppose that the eye, with all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest possible degree.
Charles Darwin
Image
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.
Charles Darwin
Image
In the long history of humankind (and animal kind, too) those who learned to collaborate and improvise most effectively have prevailed.
Charles Darwin
Image
We are not here concerned with hopes or fears, only with truth as far as our reason permits us to discover it.
Charles Darwin
Image
The instruction at Edinburgh was altogether by lectures, and these were intolerably dull, with the exception of those on chemistry.
Charles Darwin
Image
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.
Charles Darwin
Image
Thus we have given to man a pedigree of prodigious length, but not, it may be said, of noble quality.
Charles Darwin
Image
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
Image
It is absurd to talk of one animal being higher than another...we consider those, where the intellectual faculties most developed as the highest. - A bee doubtless would [use] ... instincts as a criteria.
Charles Darwin
Image
I never gave up Christianity until I was forty years of age.
Charles Darwin
Image
I am dying by inches, from not having any body to talk to about insects.
Charles Darwin
Image
I would give absolutely nothing for the theory of Natural Selection, if it requires miraculous additions at any one stage of descent.
Charles Darwin
Image
We are optimists, until we are not.
Charles Darwin
Image
Such simple instincts as bees making a beehive could be sufficient to overthrow my whole theory.
Charles Darwin
Image
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