The mystery of the beginning of all things is insoluble by us; and I for one must be content to remain an agnostic.

To kill an error is as good a service as, and sometimes even better than, the establishing of a new truth or fact.

If the misery of the poor be caused not by the laws of nature, but by our institutions, great is our sin.

Man is descended from a hairy, tailed quadruped, probably arboreal in its habits.

My mind seems to have become a kind of machine for grinding general laws out of large collections of facts.

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.

The highest possible stage in moral culture is when we recognize that we ought to control our thoughts.

An American monkey, after getting drunk on brandy, would never touch it again, and thus is much wiser than most men.

In the long history of humankind (and animal kind, too) those who learned to collaborate and improvise most effectively have prevailed.

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.

The mystery of the beginning of all things is insoluble by us; and I for one must be content to remain an agnostic.

How paramount the future is to the present when one is surrounded by children.

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.

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

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.

Man tends to increase at a greater rate than his means of subsistence.

What a book a devil's chaplain might write on the clumsy, wasteful, blundering, low, and horribly cruel work of nature!

I have called this principle, by which each slight variation, if useful, is preserved, by the term of Natural Selection.

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.

On the ordinary view of each species having been independently created, we gain no scientific explanation.

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.

I love fools' experiments. I am always making them.

A man's friendships are one of the best measures of his worth.

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

It is a cursed evil to any man to become as absorbed in any subject as I am in mine.

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.

The very essence of instinct is that it's followed independently of reason.

We must, however, acknowledge, as it seems to me, that man with all his noble qualities... still bears in his bodily frame the indelible stamp of his lowly origin.

A man who dares to waste one hour of time has not discovered the value of life.

I have tried lately to read Shakespeare, and found it so intolerably dull that it nauseated me.

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

Blushing is the most peculiar and most human of all expressions.

It is necessary to look forward to a harvest, however distant that may be, when some fruit will be reaped, some good effected.

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

The most important factor in survival is neither intelligence nor strength but adaptability.

It is not the strongest or the most intelligent who will survive but those who can best manage change.

An agnostic would be the more correct description of my state of mind.

There is no fundamental difference between man and the higher animals in their mental faculties... The lower animals, like man, manifestly feel pleasure and pain, happiness, and misery.

The love for all living creatures is the most noble attribute of man.

Man in his arrogance thinks himself a great work, worthy the interposition of a great deity. More humble and I believe true to consider him created from animals.

A mans friendships are one of the best measures of his worth.

An American monkey after getting drunk on brandy would never touch it again and thus is much wiser than most men.

It is the long history of humankind and animal kind too those who learned to collaborate and improvise most effectively have prevailed.

In the long history of humankind and animal kind too those who learned to collaborate and improvise most effectively have prevailed.

A bad earthquake at once destroys the oldest associations the world the very emblem of all that is solid has moved beneath our feet like a crust over a fluid one second of time has conveyed to the mind a strange idea of insecurity which hours of reflection would never have created.

The Indian Elephant is said sometimes to weep.

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.

Free will is to mind what chance is to matter.

The very essence of instinct is that its followed independently of reason.