Charles Darwin — "I have tried lately to read Shakespeare, and found it so intolerably dull that i…"

"I have steadily endeavoured to keep my mind free so as to give up any hypothesis, however much beloved, as soon as facts are shown to be opposed to it."

"It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change."

"I am turned into a sort of machine for observing facts and grinding out generalizations."

"I own that I cannot see as plainly as others do, and as I should wish to do, evidence of design and beneficence on all sides of us. There seems to me too much misery in the world. I cannot persuade my…"

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