Inspirational Quotations

Inspirational Quotes by Charles Darwin (British Naturalist)

Charles Robert Darwin (1809–82) was an English natural historian and geologist. Independently of Alfred Russel Wallace, Darwin is the originator of the scientific theory of evolution by natural selection, the central theorem of all biology. Darwin thus secured his place as one of the most influential persons in human history.

Born in Shrewsbury, Shropshire, England, Darwin studied at Edinburgh, but after two years, he dropped out unable to endure surgery. He went on to Christ’s College in Cambridge to study to become a clergyman and trained in taxidermy. He soon directed his enthusiasm for nature into serious science.

Darwin took the post of an unpaid naturalist on HMS Beagle around the southern hemisphere 1831–36. During this trip, he collected the material, which became the basis for his ideas on natural selection. Upon his return, Darwin made his name as a geologist, especially with his explanations of the formation of coral reefs and atolls. He also published the Journal of Researches into the Geology and Natural History of the Various Countries Visited by HMS Beagle (1839.)

Darwin formulated his brave theory of natural selection in private in 1837–39 after returning from his voyage. Before Darwin’s time, contemplations of evolution and the relatedness of all life forms were purely speculative. Even Erasmus Darwin, Darwin’s grandfather and a natural philosopher and physiologist, and the French naturalist Jean-Baptiste Lamarck had explored elementary concepts of natural selection. Darwin’s most notable scientific contribution was his vast body of evidence supporting these hypotheses.

For over a decade, Darwin continued to compile and assimilate his vast corpus of evidence in support of evolution. He suffered crippling anxiety whenever he considered publishing his theories. His principles of evolution by natural selection directly contrasted with the dominant views on the origin of life per Christian theology. Darwin feared that publishing his views on evolution would affect his standing among his pious Victorian peers—even with his devout wife. Only until two decades after the HMS Beagle trip, did he finally publish On the Origin of Species (1859,) a book that has profoundly influenced modern Western society and thought.

Advancing his theories further in The Descent of Man (1871,) Darwin described humans as an outcome of evolution. Humans have the same general anatomical and physiological principles as animals and are an advanced animal form whose superior traits are a consequence of evolutionary progression. Darwin hypothesized that humans share a common ancestry with animals, more specifically evolving from primates.

It was not until the 1930s, long after both Darwin’s death, that biologists started to study Moravian monk Gregor Mendel’s work on heredity in conjunction with Darwin’s theory of natural selection. Scientists were then able to understand how the variation of characteristics is passed on to new generations and how evolution is a process of descent with modification. Mendel’s laws justified inheritance, thereby completing Darwin’s theory of natural selection. Subsequently, Darwin’s theory became the underlying mechanism of evolution—evolutionary genetics was established as biology’s central theorem and the bedrock concept of all life sciences.

An agnostic, Darwin won the definitive British honor of burial near to John Herschel and Isaac Newton in London’s Westminster Abbey after public and parliamentary petitioning. Frederic William Farrar, the dean of Canterbury, whom Darwin had endorsed for membership of the Royal Society, delivered a moving eulogy beside his grave.

An acclaimed biography of Charles Darwin is Janet Browne’s Charles Darwin (2 vol., 1995–2002.) Darwin’s son, the botanist Francis Darwin, edited the Life and Letters of Darwin (1887–88.)

More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Charles Darwin

A man who dares to waste one hour of time has not discovered the value of life.
—Charles Darwin
Topics: Time Management, Value of Time, Living Well, Time

A man’s friendships are one of the best measures of his worth.
—Charles Darwin
Topics: Friends and Friendship

Animals, whom we have made our slaves, we do not like to consider our equal.
—Charles Darwin
Topics: Animals

Nothing exists for itself alone, but only in relation to other forms of life
—Charles Darwin
Topics: Wildlife

No one with an unbiased mind can study any living creature, however humble, without being struck with enthusiasm at its marvellous structure and properties.
—Charles Darwin

Man is descended from a hairy-tailed quadruped, probably arboreal in his habits.
—Charles Darwin
Topics: Ancestors

It is a cursed evil to any man to become as absorbed in any subject as I am in mine.
—Charles Darwin
Topics: Evil

I was a young man with uninformed ideas. I threw out queries, suggestions, wondering all the time over everything; and to my astonishment the ideas took like wildfire. People made a religion of them.
—Charles Darwin
Topics: Evolution

On the ordinary view of each species having been independently created, we gain no scientific explanation.
—Charles Darwin
Topics: Explanation

No radiant pearl, which crested fortune wears, no gem, that twinkling hangs from beauty’s ears; not the bright stars, which night’s blue arch adorn; nor rising sun, that gilds the vernal morn; shine with such lustre as the tear that flows down virtue’s manly cheek for others’ woes.
—Charles Darwin
Topics: Sympathy

The lower animals, like man, manifestly feel pleasure and pain, happiness and misery. Happiness is never better exhibited than by young animals, such as puppies, kittens, lambs, &c., when playing together, like our own children. Even insects play together, as has been described by that excellent observer, P. Huber, who saw ants chasing and pretending to bite each other, like so many puppies.
—Charles Darwin
Topics: Animals

Physiological experiment on animals is justifiable for real investigation, but not for mere damnable and detestable curiosity.
—Charles Darwin
Topics: Experiment

If I had my life to live over again, I would have made a rule to read some poetry and listen to some music at least once a week; for perhaps the parts of my brain now atrophied would have thus been kept active through use. The loss of these tastes is a loss of happiness, and may possibly be injurious to the intellect, and more probably to the moral character, by enfeebling the emotional part of our nature.
—Charles Darwin
Topics: Art

If the misery of the poor be caused not by the laws of nature, but by our institutions, great is our sin.
—Charles Darwin
Topics: Poverty

What a book a devil’s chaplain might write on the clumsy, wasteful, blundering, low, and horribly cruel work of nature!
—Charles Darwin
Topics: Nature

The assumed instinctive belief in God has been used by many persons as an argument for His existence. But this is a rash argument, as we should thus be compelled to believe in the existence of cruel and malignant spirits, only a little more powerful than man; for the belief in them is far more general than in a beneficent Diety
—Charles Darwin
Topics: Arguments

A scientific man ought to have no wishes, no affections, – a mere heart of stone.
—Charles Darwin
Topics: Wishes

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.
—Charles Darwin
Topics: Ignorance

I am not the least afraid to die.
—Charles Darwin
Topics: Dying, Death

The obedient steel with living instinct moves, and veers forever to the pole it loves.
—Charles Darwin

The expression often used by Mr. Herbert Spencer of the Survival of the Fittest is more accurate, and is sometimes equally convenient.
—Charles Darwin
Topics: Evolution

I love fools experiments. I am always making them.
—Charles Darwin
Topics: Mistakes

The mystery of the beginning of all things is insoluble by us; and I for one must be content to remain an agnostic
—Charles Darwin
Topics: Beginnings

The highest possible stage in moral culture is when we recognize that we ought to control our thoughts.
—Charles Darwin
Topics: Control, Self-Control

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