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."

"It has been remarked that a man of the name of Hardy, in the County of Essex, has actually succeeded in producing some strange and most interesting hybrids."

"The truth is nature is not concerned with human logic."

"If I were wrong, I should wish to be put right."

"Do not suppose, however, that I intend to assert anything when I say that similar bones in the hand of a man, wing of a bat, and fin of a porpoise have all been built on a common archetype."

"Animals whom we have made our slaves, we do not like to consider our equals."

"The capacity to blush is peculiar to man, and it is a capacity which seems to relate exclusively to moral feeling."

"Steady work is the only thing that will carry you through."

"Our dependence on the Deity is still as absolute as that of the watch on the maker of the watch."

"I have nothing to do with the origin of man. That subject is out of doors in my work."

"The highest stage of moral culture at which we can arrive, is when we recognize that we ought to control our thoughts."

"Freedom of thought is best promoted by the gradual illumination of men's minds."

"To think about the history of the world is to see that mankind has often acted on the presumptions which later proved to be false."

"A person may, I think, reasonably doubt whether the belief in God has produced any great benefits to mankind."

"The very first requirement in a historian is that he shall be trustworthy."

"I could show fight on natural selection having done and doing more for the progress of civilization than you seem inclined to admit."

"Looking at this intermediate form, we can at once see that it might act as a stepping stone for the transition of an aquatic animal into a terrestrial one."

"I wish it could be instilled into the mind of every young man, that indolence is a sin."

"The question of whether there exists a Creator and Ruler of the Universe has been answered in the affirmative by the highest intellects that have ever existed."

"It is not the direct increase of wealth that leads to freedom, but the direct decrease of poverty."

"The principle of natural selection is incompatible with the supernatural."

"I feel as if my books come half out of me and half out of my past reading."

"I have no great quickness of apprehension or wit which is so remarkable in some clever men."

"The very lowest state of depression of spirits is compatible with an enormous amount of intellectual power."

"There is grandeur in this view of existence that we have derived it from the original few forms."

"Every one knows that there is a great tendency in the mind to exaggerate small differences into great ones."

"The moral sense perhaps affords the best and highest distinction between man and the lower animals."

"I am not at all in a humour for talking. Go away!"

"Those who go out into the world with the belief that there is a hidden meaning behind all events will suffer a tremendous shock of disappointment."

"To be enabled to discover new things one must work at the subject which one loves with all one's might."