Quote

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

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
Intellectual
Criteria
Highest
Instincts
Higher
Bees
Animal
Faculty
Talk
Developed
Use
Absurd
Another
Instinct
Doubtless
Would
Consider
Faculties

More quotes by 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
Language is an art, like brewing or baking.... It certainly is not a true instinct, for every language has to be learnt.
Charles Darwin
Image
Life is nearly over with me. I have taken no pains about my style of writing.
Charles Darwin
Image
From my early youth I have had the strongest desire to understand or explain whatever I observed. ... To group all facts under some general laws.
Charles Darwin
Image
A grand and almost untrodden field of inquiry will be opened, on the causes and laws of variation, on correlation of growth, on the effects of use and disuse, on the direct actions of external conditions, and so forth.
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
You will be astonished to find how the whole mental disposition of your children changes with advancing years. A young child and the same when nearly grown, sometimes differ almost as much as do a caterpillar and butterfly.
Charles Darwin
Image
Formerly Milton's Paradise Lost had been my chief favourite, and in my excursions during the voyage of the Beagle, when I could take only a single small volume, I always chose Milton.
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
It may be doubted that there are many other animals which have played so important a part in the history of the world as have these lowly organized creatures.
Charles Darwin
Image
Whoever is led to believe that species are mutable will do good service by conscientiously expressing his conviction for only thus can the load of prejudice by which this subject is overwhelmed be removed.
Charles Darwin
Image
The most powerful natural species are those that adapt to environmental change without losing their fundamental identity which gives them their competitive advantage.
Charles Darwin
Image
Who when examining in the cabinet of the entomologist the gay and exotic butterflies, and singular cicadas, will associate with these lifeless objects, the ceaseless harsh music of the latter, and the lazy flight of the former - the sure accompaniments of the still, glowing noonday of the tropics.
Charles Darwin
Image
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
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
We thus learn that man is descended from a hairy quadruped, furnished with a tail and pointed ears, probably arboreal in its habits, and an inhabitant of the Old World.
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
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
To suppose that the eye could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest possible degree
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