Charles Darwin

Thomson’s views on the recent age of the world have been for some time one of my sorest troubles.

Charles Darwin

Thus disbelief crept over me at a very slow rate, but at last was complete. The rate was so slow that I felt no distress, and have never since doubted even for a single second that my conclusion was correct.

Charles Darwin

Till facts be grouped and called there can be no prediction. The only advantage of discovering laws is to foretell what will happen and to see the bearing of scattered facts.

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

To suppose that the eye could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest possible degree

Charles Darwin

Two distinct elements are included under the term “inheritance”- the transmission, and the development of characters.

Charles Darwin

We are always slow in admitting any great change of which we do not see the intermediate steps.

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

We feel surprise when travellers tell us of the vast dimensions of the Pyramids and other great ruins, but how utterly insignificant are the greatest of these, when compared to these mountains of stone accumulated by the agency of various minute and tender animals!

Charles Darwin

We may confidently come to the conclusion, that the forces which slowly and by little starts uplift continents, and that those which at successive periods pour forth volcanic matter from open orifices, are identical.

Charles Darwin