Quote

To suppose that the eye could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest possible degree

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
Highest
Selection
Possible
Formed
Eye
Absurd
Natural
Suppose
Creationist
Seems
Degree
Aberration
Degrees
Mining
Mines
Confess
Species
Freely

More quotes by Charles Darwin

Image
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.
Charles Darwin
Image
I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent and omnipotent God would have designedly created parasitic wasps with the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of Caterpillars.
Charles Darwin
Image
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.
Charles Darwin
Image
The age-old and noble thought of 'I will lay down my life to save another,' is nothing more than cowardice.
Charles Darwin
Image
A man who dares to waste one hour of time has not discovered the value of life.
Charles Darwin
Image
It is a cursed evil to any man to become as absorbed in any subject as I am in mine.
Charles Darwin
Image
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
Image
Thus we have given to man a pedigree of prodigious length, but not, it may be said, of noble quality.
Charles Darwin
Image
Progress has been much more general than retrogression
Charles Darwin
Image
Thomson's views on the recent age of the world have been for some time one of my sorest troubles.
Charles Darwin
Image
Blushing is the most peculiar and the most human of all expressions. Monkeys redden from passion, but it would require an overwhelming amount of evidence to make us believe that any animal could blush.
Charles Darwin
Image
He who understands baboon would do more towards metaphysics than Locke.
Charles Darwin
Image
Jealousy was plainly exhibited when I fondled a large doll, and when I weighed his infant sister, he being then 15? months old. Seeing how strong a feeling of jealousy is in dogs, it would probably be exhibited by infants at any earlier age than just specified if they were tried in a fitting manner
Charles Darwin
Image
It at once struck me that under these circumstances favourable variations would tend to be preserved, and unfavourable ones to be destroyed.
Charles Darwin
Image
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.
Charles Darwin
Image
Every new body of discovery is mathematical in form, because there is no other guidance we can have.
Charles Darwin
Image
...I believe there exists, & I feel within me, an instinct for the truth, or knowledge or discovery, of something of the same nature as the instinct of virtue, & that our having such an instinct is reason enough for scientific researches without any practical results ever ensuing from them.
Charles Darwin
Image
Some few, and I am one of them, even wish to God, though at the loss of millions of lives, that the North would proclaim a crusade against slavery. In the long-run, a million horrid deaths would be amply repaid in the cause of humanity. Great God! how I should like to see the greatest curse on earth - slavery - abolished!
Charles Darwin
Image
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
Image
A cell is a complex structure, with its investing membrane, nucleus, and nucleolus.
Charles Darwin