Quote

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.

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
Must
Times
Include
World
Natural
Selection
Understand
Correct
History
Clearly
True
Meaning
Natura
Past
Theory
Canon
Look
Present
Inhabitants
Looks
Full
Strictly

More quotes by Charles Darwin

Image
The traveler may feel assured, he will meet with no difficulties or dangers, excepting in rare cases, nearly so bad as he beforehand anticipates. In a moral point of view, the effect ought to be, to teach him good-humored patience, freedom from selfishness, the habit of acting for himself, and of making the best of every occurrence.
Charles Darwin
Image
If the misery of the poor be caused not by the laws of nature, but by our institutions, great is our sin.
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
The survival or preservation of certain favoured words in the struggle for existence is natural selection.
Charles Darwin
Image
I hate a Barnacle as no man ever did before, not even a Sailor in a slow-sailing ship.
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
I see no good reasons why the views given in this volume should shock the religious views of anyone.
Charles Darwin
Image
We feel surprise when travellers tell us of the vast dimensions of the Pyramids and other great ruins, but how utterly insignificant are the greatest of these, when compared to these mountains of stone accumulated by the agency of various minute and tender animals!
Charles Darwin
Image
It seems to me absurd to doubt that a man may be an ardent Theist and an evolutionist. ... I have never been an atheist in the sense of denying the existence of a God.
Charles Darwin
Image
It appears to me (whether rightly or wrongly) that direct arguments against Christianity and theism produce hardly any effect on the public and freedom of thought is best promoted by the gradual illumination of men's minds, which follows from the advance of science.
Charles Darwin
Image
If I had not been so great an invalid, I should not have done so much as I have accomplished.
Charles Darwin
Image
I look at the natural geological record as a history of the world imperfectly kept and written in a changing dialect of this history we possess the last volume alone, relating only to two or three countries. Of this volume, only here and there a short chapter has been preserved and of each page, only here and there a few lines.
Charles Darwin
Image
[Alexander von Humboldt was the] greatest scientific traveller who ever lived.
Charles Darwin
Image
The most important factor in survival is neither intelligence nor strength but adaptability.
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
Great is the power of steady misrepresentation but the history of science shows that fortunately this power does not long endure.
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
Hence, a traveller should be a botanist, for in all views plants form the chief embellishment.
Charles Darwin
Image
One hand has surely worked throughout the universe.
Charles Darwin
Image
The fact of evolution is the backbone of biology, and biology is thus in the peculiar position of being a science founded on an improved theory, is it then a science or faith?
Charles Darwin