The highest possible stage in moral culture is when we recognize that we ought to control our thoughts. - Charles Darwin
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
Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science. - Charles Darwin
An American Monkey after getting drunk on Brandy would never touch it again, and thus is much wiser than most men. - Charles Darwin
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
If the misery of our poor be caused not by the laws of nature, but by our institutions, great is our sin. - Charles Darwin
Why, on the theory of Creation, should there be so much variety and so little real novelty? - Charles Darwin
When I view all beings not as special creations, but as the lineal descendants of some few beings which lived long before the first bed of the Cambrian system was deposited, they seem to me to become ennobled. - Charles Darwin
But then with me the horrid doubt always arises whether the convictions of man's mind, which has been developed from the mind of the lower animals, are of any value or at all trustworthy. - Charles Darwin
But then arises the doubt, can the mind of man, which has, as I fully believe been developed from a mind as low as that possessed by the lowest animal, be trusted when it draws such grand conclusions? - Charles Darwin
We must, however, acknowledge as it seems to me, that a man with all his noble qualities...still bears in his bodily frame the indelible stamp of his lowly origin. - Charles Darwin
The limit of man s knowledge in any subject possesses a high interest which is perhaps increased by its close neighbourhood to the realms of imagination. - Charles Darwin
Besides love and sympathy, animals exhibit other qualities connected with the social instincts which in us would be called moral. - Charles Darwin
It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change. - Charles Darwin
A scientific man ought to have no wishes, no affections, -- a mere heart of stone. - Charles Darwin
We can allow satellites, planets, suns, universe, nay whole systems of universes, to be governed by laws, but the smallest insect, we wish to be created at once by special act. - Charles Darwin
Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowlege: 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
It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change. - Charles Darwin
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 - If it is to be done, it must be by studying Humboldt. - Charles Darwin
It is difficult to believe in the dreadful but quiet war lurking just below the serene facade of nature. - Charles Darwin
Freedom of thought is best promoted by the gradual illumination of men’s minds which follows from the advance of science. - Charles Darwin