Robert G. Ingersoll Quotes

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

He [Charles Darwin] had the greatest impact on the thinking of modern man, of anybody.

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

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 first became aware of Charles Darwin and evolution while still a schoolboy growing up in Chicago. My father and I had a passion for bird-watching, and when the snow or the rain kept me indoors, I read his bird books and learned about evolution.

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.

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.

Charles Darwin got totally hammered, woke up next to a monkey and decided he had to come up with a theory to make it all okay.

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

By the age of 11, I was no longer going to Sunday Mass, and going on birdwatching walks with my father. So early on, I heard of Charles Darwin. I guess, you know, he was the big hero. And, you know, you understand life as it now exists through evolution.

It is extraordinary the extent to which Darwin's insights not only changed his contemporaries' view of the world but also continue to be a source of great intellectual stimulation for scientists and nonscientists alike.

I have often said that I am a passionate Darwinian when it comes to explaining why we exist.

The theory of evolution was not formally published until shortly before Faraday's death. Evolution was yet to be discovered during Faraday's life. Also, I don't think that Michael Faraday would claim that the Earth is extraordinarily young.

Darwin has interested us in the history of nature's technology.

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.

I think I was probably wondering, having looked at human beings for a long time, wondering if evolution ever took place. And I still have my doubts.

It has sometimes been said that the success of the Origin proved "that the subject was in the air," or "that men's minds were prepared for it." I do not think that this is strictly true, for I occasionally sounded not a few naturalists, and never happened to come across a single one who seemed to doubt about the permanence of species.

I have come to the conclusion that Darwinism is not a testable scientific theory, but a metaphysical research programme.

Darwin's theory of evolution is the last of the great nineteenth-century mystery religions. And as we speak it is now following Freudians and Marxism into the Nether regions, and I'm quite sure that Freud, Marx and Darwin are commiserating one with the other in the dark dungeon where discarded gods gather.

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.

Evolution is a very, very important idea. It is the explanation for all of life - a stunningly simple, yet powerful explanation. If you think about it, before Darwin, we hadn't the foggiest idea of how we came into being. Now we do. It's still such an exciting idea that it is well worth everybody understanding it.

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.

If everyone understood evolution, then the tyranny of religious memes would be weakened, and we little humans might find a better way to live in this pointless universe.

Charles Darwin sailed around the world for two years on the 'Beagle,' and he had quite a bit of interest in things like the iguanas of the Galapagos, even though they were primitive compared to your average Englishman.