Charles Darwin

1809–1882 · English naturalist and biologist

Topics: learning, scientific method, science, software design

• I am almost convinced (quite contrary to opinion I started with) that species are not (it is like confessing a murder) immutable.

  — Charles Darwin

• Though the theory is worthless without the well-observed facts, the facts are useless without the frame of the theory to receive them.

  — Charles Darwin

• How odd it is that anyone should not see that all observation must be for or against some view if it is to be of any service!

  — Charles Darwin

• It is mere rubbish thinking, at present, of origin of life; one might as well think of origin of matter. —

  — Charles Darwin

• To my mind there are no advantages and many disadvantages in lectures compared with reading.

  — Charles Darwin

• Every morning during certain seasons of the year, the thrushes and blackbirds on all the lawns throughout the country draw out of their holes an astonishing number of worms; and this they could not do, unless they lay close to the surface.

  — Charles Darwin

• 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

• What a book a Devil’s chaplain might write on the clumsy, wasteful, blundering, low, and horridly cruel works of nature!

  — Charles Darwin

• I have deeply regretted that I did not proceed far enough at least to understand something of the great leading principles of mathematics, for men thus endowed seem to have an extra sense.

  — Charles Darwin

• The subject may appear an insignificant one, but we shall see that it possesses some interest; and the maxim "de minimis lex non curat," does not apply to science.

  — Charles Darwin

• I discovered, though unconsciously and insensibly, that the pleasure of observing and reasoning was a much higher one than that of skill and sport. The primeval instincts of the barbarian slowly yielded to the acquired tastes of the civilized man.

  — Charles Darwin

• Science consists in grouping facts so that general laws or conclusions may be drawn from them.

  — Charles Darwin

• Alas! A scientific man ought to have no wishes, no affections — a mere heart of stone.

  — Charles Darwin