Top 12 Charles Darwin Quotes
Reflections on science, humanity, and the wonders of life for Darwin Day 2025
This is the latest in my quotes collection series. You can check out the full collection here.
When I was a kid, all my heroes were rock stars. John Lennon, Johnny Rotten, Kurt Cobain - these were the icons I looked up to. Charles Darwin? Not even on my radar. I didn’t learn much about evolutionary theory at school, and I knew little about its originator. It wasn’t till my twenties that I started adding intellectuals to my list of heroes. And it wasn’t till my mid-twenties that I caught the evolution bug, and started learning about the man who got the ball rolling on modern evolutionary theory.
As soon as I did, though, Darwin became one of the great heroes of my life. I quickly realized that he wasn’t just a great scientist; he was a keen observer of the human condition, a relentless seeker of truth, and an insightful and inspired writer. Not only that, but Darwin was a fundamentally decent and compassionate human being.
So, in honor of Darwin Day 2025 - February 12th, the anniversary of his birth - let’s celebrate the man and his mind with twelve of his most insightful, provocative, and inspiring quotes. Whether you’re a longtime admirer of his work or just beginning to explore his legacy, I hope these words inspire curiosity, reflection, and perhaps even a little awe for the grandeur of life’s unfolding story.
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.
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 of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.
The old argument of design in nature, as given by Paley, which formerly seemed to me so conclusive, fails, now that the law of natural selection has been discovered.
Man in his arrogance thinks himself a great work worthy of the interposition of a deity. More humble and I think truer to consider him created from animals.
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.
Man has an instinctive tendency to speak, as we see in the babble of our young children, while no child has an instinctive tendency to bake, brew, or write.
Dominant languages and dialects spread widely, and lead to the gradual extinction of other tongues... Distinct languages may be crossed or blended together. We see variability in every tongue, and new words are continually cropping up; but as there is a limit to the powers of the memory, single words, like whole languages, gradually become extinct. As Max Muller has well remarked: - “A struggle for life is constantly going on amongst the words and grammatical forms in each language. The better, the shorter, the easier forms are constantly gaining the upper hand, and they owe their success to their own inherent virtue.” To these more important causes of the survival of certain words, mere novelty and fashion may be added; for there is in the mind of man a strong love for slight changes in all things. The survival or preservation of certain favoured words in the struggle for existence is natural selection.
I own that I cannot see as plainly as others do, and as I should wish to do, evidence of design and beneficence on all sides of us. There seems to me too much misery in the world. I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent and omnipotent God would have designedly created the Ichneumonidæ with the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of Caterpillars, or that a cat should play with mice... I feel most deeply that the whole subject is too profound for the human intellect. A dog might as well speculate on the mind of Newton.
The love for all living creatures is the most noble attribute of man.
We must, however, acknowledge, as it seems to me, that man with all his noble qualities... still bears in his bodily frame the indelible stamp of his lowly origin.
An American monkey, after getting drunk on brandy, would never touch it again, and thus is much wiser than most men.
I am very poorly today & very stupid & I hate everybody & everything. One lives only to make blunders. [From a letter to biologist Charles Lyell, dated October 1st, 1861.]
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Darwin's Greatest Contribution
It’s the 12th of February once again, and as science nerds everywhere know, that means it’s Darwin Day: the annual celebration of the anniversary of Charles Darwin’s birth in 1809.