Quote

It may be doubted whether any character can be named which is distinctive of a race and is constant.

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
Character
May
Doubted
Distinctive
Named
Constant
Race
Whether

More quotes by Charles Darwin

Image
We will now discuss in a little more detail the Struggle for Existence.
Charles Darwin
Image
I have long discovered that geologists never read each other's works, and that the only object in writing a book is a proof of earnestness.
Charles Darwin
Image
Sympathy for the lowest animals is one of the noblest virtues with which man is endowed.
Charles Darwin
Image
I have called this principle, by which each slight variation, if useful, is preserved, by the term of Natural Selection.
Charles Darwin
Image
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
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
We have seen that the senses and intuitions, the various emotions and faculties, such as love, memory, attention and curiosity, imitation, reason, etc., of which man boasts, may be found in an incipient, or even sometimes in a well-developed condition, in the lower animals.
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
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
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
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
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
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
Hereafter we shall be compelled to acknowledge that the only distinction between species and well-marked varieties is, that the latter are known, or believed to be connected at the present day by intermediate gradations whereas species were formerly thus connected.
Charles Darwin
Image
There is no fundamental difference between man and animals in their ability to feel pleasure and pain, happiness, and misery.
Charles Darwin
Image
If I had my life to live over again, I would have made a rule to read some poetry and listen to some music at least once every week.
Charles Darwin
Image
A language, like a species, when extinct, never... reappears.
Charles Darwin
Image
Nothing can be more hopeless than to attempt to explain this similarity of pattern in members of the same class, by utility or by the doctrine of final causes.
Charles Darwin
Image
A moral being is one who is capable of reflecting on his past actions and their motives - of approving of some and disapproving of others.
Charles Darwin
Image
There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.
Charles Darwin