Charles Darwin published The Origin of Species on November 24, 1859, just 150 years ago. As college zoology major, I'm a big fan. One of my favorite Darwin quotes is this:
It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change.
To celebrate his wisdom, I share with you here some selected quotes…
A man who dares to waste one hour of time has not discovered the value of life.
A man's friendships are one of the best measures of his worth.
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.
A scientific man ought to have no wishes, no affections, – a mere heart of stone.
An American monkey, after getting drunk on brandy, would never touch it again, and thus is much wiser than most men.
Animals, whom we have made our slaves, we do not like to consider our equal.
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.
False facts are highly injurious to the progress of science, for they often endure long; but false views, if supported by some evidence, do little harm, for every one takes a salutary pleasure in proving their falseness.
How paramount the future is to the present when one is surrounded by children.
I am turned into a sort of machine for observing facts and grinding out conclusions.
I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent and omnipotent God would have designedly created parasitic wasps with the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of Caterpillars.
I have called this principle, by which each slight variation, if useful, is preserved, by the term of Natural Selection.
I have tried lately to read Shakespeare, and found it so intolerably dull that it nauseated me.
I love fools' experiments. I am always making them.
If the misery of the poor be caused not by the laws of nature, but by our institutions, great is our sin.
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.
In the long history of humankind (and animal kind, too) those who learned to collaborate and improvise most effectively have prevailed.
It is a cursed evil to any man to become as absorbed in any subject as I am in mine.
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