Charles Darwin Quotes: 9

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

• If I had my life to live over again, I would have made a rule to read some poetry and listen to some music at least once every week.

  The Autobiography of Charles Darwin, 1809–82

• 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.

  The Descent of Man

• A man's friendships are one of the best measures of his worth.

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

  The Origin of Species

• Nothing is easier than to admit in words the truth of the universal struggle for life, or more difficult--at least I have found it so--than constantly to bear this conclusion in mind.

  The Origin of Species

• 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.

  Notebooks

• One day, on tearing off some old bark, I saw two rare beetles, and seized one in each hand. Then I saw a third and new kind, which I could not bear to lose, so I popped the one which I held in my right hand into my mouth. Alas! it ejected some intensely acrid fluid, which burnt my tongue so that I was forced to spit the beetle out, which was lost, as was the third one.

• But then arises the doubt, can the mind of man, which has, as I fully believe been developed from a mind as low as that possessed by the lowest animal, be trusted when it draws such grand conclusions?

  Life & Letters of Charles Darwin