Quotes by Charles Darwin

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.
- Charles Darwin

Related topics: Values Wisdom

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.
- Charles Darwin

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

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

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Thank you for joining me on this journey we call life,
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

The highest possible stage in moral culture
is when we recognize that we ought to control our thoughts.
- Charles Darwin

The mystery of the beginning
of all things is insoluble by us;
and I for one, must be content to remain an agnostic.
- Charles Darwin

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

In the long history of humankind (and animal-kind, too)
those who learned to collaborate and
improvise most effectively have prevailed.
- Charles Darwin

A man who dares to waste one hour of time
has not discovered the value of life.
- Charles Darwin

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

The very essence of instinct is that
it's followed independently of reason.
- Charles Darwin

A man's friendships are one of the best measures of his worth.
- Charles Darwin

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

In the struggle for survival,
the fittest win out at the expense of their rivals
because they succeed in adapting
themselves best to their environment.
- Charles Darwin

It is not the strongest of the species that survive,
nor the most intelligent,
but the one most responsive to change.
- Charles Darwin

Man is descended from a hairy, tailed quadruped,
probably arboreal in its habits.
- Charles Darwin

What a book a devil's chaplain might write
on the clumsy, wasteful, blundering, low,
and horribly cruel work of nature!
- Charles Darwin

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

It is a cursed evil to any man to become as absorbed
in any subject as I am in mine.
- Charles Darwin

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

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

I have tried lately to read Shakespeare,
and found it so intolerably dull that it nauseated me.
- Charles Darwin

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

Man tends to increase at a greater rate
than his means of subsistence.
- Charles Darwin

I cannot persuade myself that a
beneficent and omnipotent God
would have designedly created parasitic wasps
with the express intention of their feeding
within the living bodies of caterpillars.
- Charles Darwin

The universe we observe has precisely
the properties we should expect
if there is, at bottom, no design,
no purpose, no evil, no good,
nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.
- Charles Darwin

My mind seems to have become a kind of machine for
grinding general laws out of large collections of facts.
- Charles Darwin

I love fools' experiments.
I am always making them.
- Charles Darwin

I am turned into a sort of machine for observing facts
and grinding out conclusions.
- Charles Darwin

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 every one takes a salutary pleasure in proving their falseness.
- Charles Darwin

Increase of material comforts,
it may be generally laid down,
does not in any way whatsoever
conduce to moral growth.
- Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi

About morals: I know only that
what is moral is what you feel good after
and what is immoral is what you feel bad after.
- Ernest Hemingway

The perception of beauty is a moral test.
- Henry David Thoreau

The acceptance of oneself is
the essence of the whole moral problem
and the epitome of a whole outlook on life.
- Carl Jung

Everything's got a moral, if only you can find it.
- Lewis Carroll

Do not be too moral.
You may cheat yourself out of much life.
So aim above morality.
Be not simply good;
be good for something.
- Henry David Thoreau

A person acting from a motivation
of contribution and service
rises to such a level of moral authority
that worldly success is a natural result.
- Marianne Williamson

If we are to go forward, we must go back
and rediscover those precious values -
that all reality hinges on moral foundations
and that all reality has spiritual control.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.

The hottest place in Hell is reserved for those
who remain neutral in times of great moral conflict.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.

A true "moral compass" never points toward discrimination.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Compassion is the universal standard of moral living.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

I am not interested in power for power's sake,
but I'm interested in power that is moral,
that is right and that is good.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.

Moral authority is never retained by
any attempt to hold on to it.
It comes without seeking and
is retained without effort.
- Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi

The moral arc of the universe
bends at the elbow of justice.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.

It is curious - curious that physical courage
should be so common in the world, and moral courage so rare
- Mark Twain

The worst government is often the most moral.
One composed of cynics is often very tolerant and humane.
But when fanatics are on top there is no limit to oppression.
- H. L. Mencken

The interests of a nation, when well understood,
will be found to coincide with their moral duties.
- Thomas Jefferson

I am an Epicurean.
I consider the genuine (not the imputed) doctrines of Epicurus
as containing everything rational in moral philosophy
which Greek and Roman leave to us.
- Thomas Jefferson

I look forward to a great future for America -
a future in which our country will match its military strength
with our moral restraint,
its wealth with our wisdom, its power with our purpose.
- John F. Kennedy

The limitation of riots, moral questions aside,
is that they cannot win and their participants know it.
Hence, rioting is not revolutionary but reactionary
because it invites defeat.
It involves an emotional catharsis,
but it must be followed by a sense of futility.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.

Mistakes are, after all, the foundations of truth,
and if a man does not know what a thing is,
it is at least an increase in knowledge
if he knows what it is not.
- Carl Jung

Words which do not give the
light of Christ increase the darkness.
- Mother Teresa

Knowledge rests not upon truth alone, but upon error also.
- Carl Jung

Freedom is not worth having if it
does not connote freedom to err.
- Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi

To err is human, to forgive divine.
- Alexander Pope

Mistakes are the portals of discovery.
- James Joyce

Remember, there are no mistakes, only lessons.
Love yourself, trust your choices, and everything is possible.
- Cherie-Carter Scotts

Success seems to be connected with action.
Successful people keep moving.
They make mistakes, but they don't quit.
- Conrad Hilton

Achievement seems to be connected with action.
Successful men and women keep moving.
They make mistakes, but they don't quit.
- Conrad Hilton

It's okay to make mistakes.
Mistakes are our teachers - they help us to learn.
- John Bradshaw

There are two mistakes one can make along the road to truth
- not going all the way and not starting.
- The Buddha

I've learned that mistakes can often be
as good a teacher as success.
- Jack Welch

There are only two mistakes one can make along the road to truth;
not going all the way, and not starting.
- The Buddha

It is unwise to be too sure of one's own wisdom.
It is healthy to be reminded that the strongest
might weaken and the wisest might err.
- Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi

My heroes are the ones who survived doing it wrong,
who made mistakes, but recovered from them.
- Bono

I claim to be a simple individual liable
to err like any other fellow mortal.
I own, however, that I have humility enough
to confess my errors and to retrace my steps.
- Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi

Learn to get in touch with the silence within yourself,
and know that everything in life has purpose.
There are no mistakes, no coincidences,
all events are blessings given to us to learn from.
- Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

A doctor can bury his mistakes
but an architect can only advise his clients to plant vines.
- Frank Lloyd Wright

Experience is simply the name we give our mistakes.
- Oscar Wilde

I never make stupid mistakes.
Only very, very clever ones.
- John Peel

The physician can bury his mistakes,
but the architect can only advise his client to plant vines -
so they should go as far as possible from home
to build their first buildings.
- Frank Lloyd Wright

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May the world be kind to you, and may your own thoughts be gentle upon yourself.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie