Charles Darwin Quotes

It {Darwin's theory of evolution] was a concept of such stunning simplicity, but it gave rise, naturally, to all of the infinite and baffling complexity of life. The awe it inspired in me made the awe that people talk about in respect of religious experience seem, frankly, silly beside it. I'd take the awe of understanding over the awe of ignorance any day.

Charles Darwin made arguably the greatest discovery any human has ever made. He was a man of great persistence. He wasn't probably a natural genius, he worked very hard - even though he was an invalid. He was a great family man, a very nice man. I think he was admirable in all sorts of ways.

Evolution is a laughing matter for anybody that's got a rational mind.

You know what, evolution is a myth. ... Why aren't monkeys still evolving into humans?

Darwin's book is very important and serves me as a basis in natural science for the class struggle in history. One has to put up with the crude English method of development, of course. Despite all deficiencies not only is the death-blow dealt here for the first time to 'teleology' in the natural sciences, but their rational meaning is empirically explained.

The publication in 1859 of the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin made a marked epoch in my own mental development, as it did in that of human thought generally. Its effect was to demolish a multitude of dogmatic barriers by a single stroke, and to arouse a spirit of rebellion against all ancient authorities whose positive and unauthenticated statements were contradicted by modern science.

People still don't get how astounding Darwinism is. People think what shocked everybody was that Charles Darwin seemed to be saying we had descended from apes.

I've got one of Darwin's books at home and some of that stuff is pretty damn funny. Some of his stuff is true, like that the giraffe has a long neck so it can reach the leaves. But I just don't think you can swallow the whole piece.

All the most prominent Darwinists proclaim naturalistic philosophy when they think it safe to do so.

[Evolution is] one of the best documented, most compelling and exciting concepts in all of science.

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

People need to understand the basics of evolution if they are going to reject it—otherwise, they are not contributing anything productive to modern society.

Evolution is one of the most powerful and important ideas ever developed in the history of science. Every question it raises leads to new answers, new discoveries, and new smarter questions. The science of evolution is as expansive as nature itself. It is also the most meaningful creation story that humans have ever found.

I'll admit that the discovery of evolution is humbling, but it is also empowering. It transforms our relationship to the life around us. Instead of being outsiders watching the natural world go by, we are insiders. We are part of the process; we are the exquisite result of billions of years of natural research and development.

In laying hands upon the sacred ark of absolute permanency, in treating the forms that had been regarded as types of fixity and perfection as originating and passing away, the Origin of Species introduced a mode of thinking that in the end was bound to transform the logic of knowledge, and hence the treatment of morals, politics, and religion.

Darwin matters because evolution matters. Evolution matters because science matters. Science matters because it is the preeminent story of our age, an epic saga about who we are, where we came from and where we are going.

Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection is the only workable explanation that has ever been proposed for the remarkable fact of our own existence, indeed the existence of all life wherever it may turn up in the universe.

I would give absolutely nothing for the theory of Natural Selection, if it requires miraculous additions at any one stage of descent.

Why, if species have descended from other species by insensibly fine gradations, do we not everywhere see innumerable transitional forms.

Evolution is not truth; it is merely a hypothesis-it is millions of guesses strung together.

Every philosophical thinker hails it [The Origin of Species] as a veritable Whitworth gun in the armoury of liberalism.

What Galileo and Newton were to the seventeenth century, Darwin was to the nineteenth.

Darwin's greatest achievement was to show that the appearance of purpose, planning, teleology (design), and intentionality in the origin and development of human and animal species was entirely an illusion. The illusion could be explained by evolutionary processes that contained no such purpose at all. But the spread of ideas through imitation required the whole apparatus of human consciousness and intentionality

Even if there were no actual evidence in favor of the Darwinian theory, we should still be justified in preferring it over all rival theories.

To put it bluntly but fairly, anyone today who doubts that the variety of life on this planet was produced by a process of evolution is simply ignorant — inexcusably ignorant, in a world where three out of four people have learned to read and write.