Charles Darwin

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.

It is a fatal fault to reason from the origin of species instead of from their anatomy.

The fundamental truth of natural selection is that it is not chance, but a law-governed process.

I have no hope of the resurrection of the dead; I have no faith in immortality.

Science is the great antiseptic against superstition.

The plow is one of the most ancient and most valuable of man's inventions; but long before he existed the land was in fact regularly plowed.

To suppose that the eye could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest possible degree.

A scientific man ought to have no wishes, no affections, - a mere heart of stone.

The fact of evolution is the backbone of biology.

Light will be thrown on the origin of man and his history.

I am quite ashamed of my laziness.

The offspring of all these mixed marriages show no signs of a mongrel character.

Nothing is easier than to admit in words the truth of the universal struggle for life.

Sympathy is one of the most powerful principles in human nature.

I feel most deeply that the whole subject is too profound for the human intellect.

The sight of a feather in a peacock's tail, whenever I gaze at it, makes me sick!

Man selects only for his own good; Nature only for that of the being which she tends.

Every one who has ever had the misfortune to talk with people in the heart or on the edge of insanity, knows that one is then conscious of a sort of profound and incomparable solemnity.

The moral nature of man has reached its present standard, partly through the advancement of his reasoning powers and partly through the development of his social feelings.

I have steadily endeavored to keep my mind free so as to give up any hypothesis, however much beloved.