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

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
Philosopher
Travel Writer
The Mount
Shrewsbury
Charles Robert Darwin
Charles R. Darwin
Darwin
Constant
Race
Whether
Character
May
Doubted
Distinctive
Named

More quotes by Charles Darwin

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On the theory of natural selection we can clearly understand the full meaning of that old canon in natural history, “Natura non facit saltum.” This canon, if we look only to the present inhabitants of the world, is not strictly correct, but if we include all those of past times, it must by my theory be strictly true.
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Nature will tell you a direct lie if she can.
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I never gave up Christianity until I was forty years of age.
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Man is descended from a hairy, tailed quadruped, probably arboreal in its habits.
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So in regard to mental qualities, their transmission is manifest in our dogs, horses and other domestic animals. Besides special tastes and habits, general intelligence, courage, bad and good tempers. etc., are certainly transmitted.
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I think it inevitably follows, that as new species in the course of time are formed through natural selection, others will become rarer and rarer, and finally extinct. The forms which stand in closest competition with those undergoing modification and improvement will naturally suffer most.
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With highly civilised nations continued progress depends in a subordinate degree on natural selection for such nations do not supplant and exterminate one another as do savage tribes.
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It is a cursed evil to any man to become as absorbed in any subject as I am in mine.
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If I had life to live over again, I would give my life to poetry, to music, to literature, and to art to make life richer and happier. In my youth I steeled myself against them and thought them so much waste.
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It is always advisable to perceive clearly our ignorance.
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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.
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Our descent, then, is the origin of our evil passions!! The devil under form of Baboon is our grandfather.
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[Alexander von Humboldt was the] greatest scientific traveller who ever lived.
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I have tried lately to read Shakespeare, and found it so intolerably dull that it nauseated me.
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On seeing the marsupials in Australia for the first time and comparing them to placental mammals: “An unbeliever . . . might exclaim 'Surely two distinct Creators must have been at work'”
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At some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilized races of man will almost certainly exterminate, and replace the savage races throughout the world.
Charles Darwin
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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.
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Although much remains obscure, and will long remain obscure, ... I am convinced that Natural Selection has been the main but not exclusive means of modification.
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The highest possible stage in moral culture is when we recognize that we ought to control our thoughts.
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The survival or preservation of certain favoured words in the struggle for existence is natural selection.
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