We cannot fathom the marvelous complexity of an organic being; but on the hypothesis here advanced this complexity is much increased. Each living creature must be looked at as a microcosm–a little universe, formed of...

But I am very poorly today & very stupid & I hate everybody & everything. One lives only to make blunders.

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

Thus, from the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows. There is grandeur in this view...

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.

There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on...

The earthquake, however, must be to every one a most impressive event: the earth, considered from our earliest childhood as the type of solidity, has oscillated like a thin crust beneath our feet; and in...

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.

In regard to the amount of difference between the races, we must make some allowance for our nice powers of discrimination gained by a long habit of observing ourselves.

We can allow satellites, planets, suns, universe, nay whole systems of universe, to be governed by laws, but the smallest insect, we wish to be created at once by special act.

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

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 everyone takes a salutary pleasure in proving their...

The loss of these tastes [for poetry and music] is a loss of happiness, and may possibly be injurious to the intellect, and more probably to the moral character, by enfeebling the emotional part of...

I fully agree with all that you say on the advantages of H. Spencer’s excellent expression of ‘the survival of the fittest.’ This, however, had not occurred to me till reading your letter. It is,...

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

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

I swear in the name of almighty God, my loyalty to the Fuhrer?” How come that on the belt buckle of every Nazi soldier it says Gott mit uns, God on our side? How come...

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

We are not here concerned with hopes or fears, only with truth as far as our reason permits us to discover it.

It is always advisable to perceive clearly our ignorance.

This survival of the fittest implies multiplication of the fittest.{The phrase ‘survival of the fittest’ was not originated by Charles Darwin, though he discussed Spencer’s ‘excellent expression’ in a letter to Alfred Russel Wallace (Jul...

In the distant future I see open fields for far more important researches. Psychology will be based on a new foundation, that of the necessary acquirement of each mental power and capacity by gradation. Light...

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

One general law, leading to the advancement of all organic beings, namely, multiply, vary, let the strongest live and the weakest die.

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

Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science.

Freedom of thought is best promoted by the gradual illumination of men’s minds which follows from the advance of science.

It is difficult to believe in the dreadful but quiet war lurking just below the serene facade of nature.