Charles Darwin
Charles Darwin
Charles Robert Darwin, FRS FRGS FLS FZSwas an English naturalist and geologist, best known for his contributions to the science of evolution. He established that all species of life have descended over time from common ancestors, and in a joint publication with Alfred Russel Wallace introduced his scientific theory that this branching pattern of evolution resulted from a process that he called natural selection, in which the struggle for existence has a similar effect to the artificial selection involved in...
ProfessionScientist
Date of Birth12 February 1809
CityShrewsbury, England
Man may be excused for feeling some pride at having risen, though not through his own exertions, to the very summit of the organic scale; and the fact of his having thus risen, instead of having been aboriginally placed there, may give him hopes for a still higher destiny in the distant future.
I think it can be shown that there is such an unerring power at work in Natural Selection, which selects exclusively for the good of each organic being.
A novel according to my taste, does not come into the moderately good class unless it contains some person whom one can thoroughly love - and if a pretty woman, all the better.
Hence, a traveller should be a botanist, for in all views plants form the chief embellishment.
The more one thinks, the more one feels the hopeless immensity of man's ignorance.
The moral faculties are generally and justly esteemed as of higher value than the intellectual powers.
Only the fittest will survive.
I feel like an old warhorse at the sound of a trumpet when I read about the capturing of rare beetles.
It may be doubted whether any character can be named which is distinctive of a race and is constant.
When primeval man first used flint stones for any purpose, he would have accidentally splintered them, and would then have used the sharp fragments. From this step it would be a small one to break the flints on purpose and not a very wide step to fashion them rudely.
I ought, or I ought not, constitute the whole of morality.
The season of love is that of battle. The roots of these fights run deep.
The survival or preservation of certain favoured words in the struggle for existence is natural selection.
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.