Charles Darwin Quotes

It at once struck me that under these circumstances favourable variations would tend to be preserved, and unfavourable ones to be destroyed.

The secrets of evolution are death and time-the deaths of enormous numbers of lifeforms that were imperfectly adapted to the environment; and time for a long succession of small mutations.

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

Evolution is like walking on a rolling barrel. The walker isn't so much interested in where the barrel is going as he is in keeping on top of it.

In the survival of favoured individuals and races, during the constantly-recurring struggle for existence, we see a powerful and ever-acting form of selection.

As natural selection works solely by and for the good of each being, all corporeal and mental endowments will tend to progress toward perfection.

Nature doesn't see things through the prism of good or bad. It rewards efficiency. That is the simplicity of evolution, matching design to environment.

It cannot but happen?that those will survive whose functions happen to be most nearly in equilibrium with the modified aggregate of external forces? This survival of the fittest implies multiplication of the fittest.

Mutation is random; natural selection is the very opposite of random.

The facts of variability, of the struggle for existence, of adaptation to conditions, were notorious enough; but none of us had suspected that the road to the heart of the species problem lay through them, until Darwin and Wallace dispelled the darkness.

A grain in the balance will determine which individual shall live and which shall die - which variety or species shall increase in number, and which shall decrease, or finally become extinct.

If we want to sum up the theory of evolution by natural selection in two words, which have great relevance for all societies and businesses, we should simply remember: diversity works.

If an organised body is not in the situation and circumstances best adapted to its sustenance and propagation, then, in conceiving an indefinite variety among the individuals of that species, we must be assured, that, on the one hand, those which depart most from the best adapted constitution, will be most liable to perish, while, on the other hand, those organised bodies, which most approach to the best constitution for the present circumstances, will be best adapted to continue, in preserving themselves and multiplying the individuals of their race.

This preservation of favourable variations and the destruction of injurious variations, I call Natural Selection, or the Survival of the Fittest. Variations neither useful nor injurious would not be affected by natural selection and would be left a fluctuating element.

I'm here as a product of process of evolution, which doesn't make very many exceptions. And which rates life relatively cheaply.

The reason for natural selection's great success is that it provides a satisfying explanation of how evolution might have occurred: individual organisms vary, and if those variations are inherited, the successful ones will survive and propagate and pass down their desirable traits to succeeding generations.

In the game of life, less diversity means fewer options for change. Wild or domesticated, panda or pea, adaptation is the requirement for survival.

In October, 1838, … I happened to read for amusement Malthus on population, and being well prepared to appreciate the struggle for existence which everywhere goes on from long continuous observation of the habits of animals and plants, it at once struck me that under these circumstances favorable variations would tend to be preserved and unfavorable ones to be destroyed. The result of this would be the formation of new species. Here, then, I had at last got a theory by which to work

If death weren't around to 'finalize' the Darwinian process, we'd all still be amoebas.

People have always asked whether evolution is constantly driving onwards and upwards. Is there always going to be improvement? The answer is no: evolution is a progression of form and function, but it is not purposeful.

Natural selection is anything but random.

Evolution doesn't just look for things that are fun; if it did, we'd know how to fly.

Radiation is one of the important factors in evolution. It causes mutation, and some level of mutation is actually good for evolution.

We're not the best, but we happen to be what evolution came up with.

Your creatures can come into being only, like shoot from stem, as part of an endlessly renewed process of evolution.