Charles Darwin Quotes

Undirected natural processes like the Darwinian mechanism are incapable of generating the specified complexity that exists in biological organisms … the natural sciences need to leave room for design.

To describe an animal as a physico-chemical system of extreme complexityis no doubt perfectly correct, except that it misses out on the animalness of the animal.

A bit of mould is a pleiad of flowers; a nebula is an ant-hill of stars.

The outstanding scientific discovery of the twentieth century is not television, or radio, but rather the complexity of the land organism.

Every dew-drop and rain-drop had a whole heaven within it.

The humorous look of children is perhaps the most endearing of all the bonds that hold the Cosmos together. Their top-heavy dignity is more touching than any humility; their solemnity gives us more hope for all things than a thousand carnivals of optimism; their large and lustrous eyes seem to hold all the stars in their astonishment; their fascinating absence of nose seems to give to us the most perfect hint of the humour that awaits us in the kingdom of heaven.

When Christ ascended Triumphantly from star to star He left the gates of Heaven ajar.

The beauty of a living thing is not the atoms that go into it, but the way those atoms are put together. Information distilled over 4 billion years of biological evolution. Incidentally, all the organisms on the Earth are made essentially of that stuff. An eyedropper full of that liquid could be used to make a caterpillar or a petunia if only we knew how to put the components together.

The Christian religion and morality extols the glory of the Hereafter, and therefore remains indifferent to the horrors of the earth. Indeed, the idea of self-denial and of all that makes for pain and sorrow is its test of human worth, its passport to the entry into heaven.

I didn't believe in systems. Everything human was imperfect and ultimately absurd. What did I believe in then? In humor. In laughing at systems, at people, at one's self. In laughing even at one's need to laugh all the time. In seeing life as contradictory, many-sided, various, funny, tragic, and with moments of outrageous beauty. In seeing life as a fruitcake, including delicious plums and bad peanuts, but meant to be devoured hungrily all the same because you couldn't feast on the plums without also sometimes being poisoned by the peanuts.

Man is only man at the surface. Remove the skin, dissect, and immediately you come to machinery.

When the stars threw down their spears, and watered heaven with their tears, did he smile his work to see? Did he who made the Lamb make thee?

Belief is self-knowing. Even Yoda out of Star Wars said, 'Do or do not. There is no try.'

I always trust the microcosm over the macrocosm.

To the extent that we honor all aspects of ourselves, we remove revulsion, self-hate, horror, and terror from our lives. As whole human beings we are the creatures of the greatest complexity on this planet. Respect for this complexity includes our insisting on acceptance of the inconsistent and incongruous.

The stars, that in their courses roll, Have much instruction given; But Thy good Word informs my soul How I may climb to Heaven.

An insect is more complex than a star..and is a far greater challenge to understand.

The star of the unconquered will, He rises in my breast, Serene, and resolute, and still, And calm, and self-possessed.

If anyone cannot feel the power of God when he looks upon the stars, then I doubt whether he is capable of feeling at all. From the enduring wonder of the heavens flows all grace and power. If anyone thinks it is mindless then he himself must be out of his mind.

We cannot conceive how the Foetus is form'd in the Womb, nor as much as how a Plant springs from the Earth we tread on ... And if we are ignorant of the most obvious things about us, and the most considerable within our selves, 'tis then no wonder that we know not the constitution and powers of the creatures, to whom we are such strangers.

It is by becoming increasingly complex that the self might be said to grow.

Whatever discoveries we may have made in the regions of self-love, there still remain many unknown lands.

We live our little life; but Heaven is above us and all around and close to us; and Eternity is before us and behind us; and suns and stars are silent witnesses and watchers over us. We are enfolded by Infinity.

Amongst the learned the lawyers claim first place, the most self-satisfied class of people, as they roll their rock of Sisyphus and string together six hundred laws in the same breath, no matter whether relevant or not, piling up opinion on opinion and gloss on gloss to make their profession seem the most difficult of all. Anything which causes trouble has special merit in their eyes.

We are living in the time of self-creation and you can become your own star and this is the essential set that it needs to take that selfie that's going to take you to that next place.