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In the long history of humankind (and animal-kind, too)
by 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

Related topics: Life Human-Nature Psychology Evolution Teamwork Collaboration

Quotes by Charles Darwin

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Long Quotes and Sayings

Every good relationship, especially marriage, is based on respect.
If it's not based on respect,
nothing that appears to be good will last very long.
- Amy Grant

If I had no sense of humor,
I would long ago have committed suicide.
- Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi

It doesn't matter how long my hair is
or what color my skin is
or whether I'm a woman or a man.
- John Lennon

Life is a long lesson in humility.
- James M. Barrie

Relax. Take a day off.
Go for a long silent walk in the woods.
The world will still be there tomorrow -
as good and as bad as ever.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

I long to accomplish a great and noble task,
but it is my chief duty to accomplish small tasks
as if they were great and noble.
- Helen Keller

Security is mostly a superstition.
It does not exist in nature,
nor do the children of men as a whole experience it.
Avoiding danger is no safer
in the long run than outright exposure.
Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing.
- Helen Keller

Part of our essential humanity is paying respect to what God gave us
and what will be here a long time after we're gone.
- William J. Clinton

In the long run, men hit only what they aim at.
Therefore, they had better aim at something high.
- Henry David Thoreau

The best remedy for a short temper is a long walk.
- Jacqueline Schiff

It had long since come to my attention
that people of accomplishment
rarely sat back and let things happen to them.
They went out and happened to things.
- Leonardo da Vinci

Serious illness doesn't bother me for long
because I am too inhospitable a host.
- Albert Schweitzer

How you think when you lose
determines how long it will be until you win.
- Gilbert (G. K.) Chesterton

I don't care what anybody says about me
as long as it isn't true.
- Truman Capote

Take a long walk alone in the woods -
leave the cellphone and music player at home.
Your whole BEing will appreciate it.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Nature puts no question and answers none which we mortals ask.
She has long ago taken her resolution.
- Henry David Thoreau

Every one desires to live long,
but no one would be old.
- Abraham Lincoln

Three things cannot be long hidden:
the sun, the moon, and the truth.
- The Buddha

As long as any adult thinks that he,
like the parents and teachers of old,
can become introspective,
invoking his own youth to understand
the youth before him,
he is lost.
- Margaret Mead

Personally, I have fond memories of playing
on slippery rocks on the banks of a rushing river
as a child and hitchhiking in college.
To those who say, "But times are different now,"
I reply that statistically life is much safer now
than in the 1950s, with regard to both crime and accidents.
What has changed is our attitudes.
In those years, a broken leg from falling off a swing
or the back of a tractor was just part of childhood -
an excuse for gathering autographs.
Today that broken leg would be a source
of outrage and probably lawsuits.
I long for a simpler time when life was taken less seriously.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Millions long for immortality
who don't know what to do on a rainy Sunday afternoon.
- Susan Ertz

It takes a long time to grow an old friend.
- John Leonard

Not everything that casts a long shadow is to be feared.
- Swedish Proverb

Pain is a difficult companion. There's no getting around that.
But, if pain is to be a companion, searching and discovering
your own best ways to travel with that pain
will lead you to the joy that you long to have.
They are your paths, your ways and while my experience
and the experiences of others may inspire you,
ultimately it will be the choices you discover
and make for yourself that lead you to certain joy
in the midst of your challenges.
- Mary Anne Radmacher

So long as the memory of certain
beloved friends lives in my heart,
I shall say that life is good.
- Helen Keller

A man is what he thinks about all day long.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

My biggest dream is that my words will inspire heart,
hope and personal responsibility in people around the globe
long after my feet in these shoes aren't walking the planet.
- Mary Anne Radmacher

Today is the right day to do
what you have long wanted to do.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

It takes a long while for a naturally trustful person
to reconcile himself to the idea that
after all God will not help him
- H. L. Mencken

Gather yourself by the sea shore and I will love you there.
Assemble yourself with wild things,
with songs of the sparrow and sea-foam.
Let mad beauty collect itself in your eyes
and it will shine - Calling me.
For I long for a man with nests of wild things in his hair.
A man who will Kiss the Flame.
- Jewel

Everything deep is also simple
and can be reproduced simply
as long as its reference
to the whole truth is maintained.
But what matters is not what is witty
but what is true.
- Albert Schweitzer

As long as one keeps searching, the answers come.
- Joan Baez

When people get married because they think
it's a long-time love affair,
they'll be divorced very soon,
because all love affairs end in disappointment.
But marriage is a recognition of a spiritual identity.
- Joseph Campbell

The tragedy of life is not that it ends so soon,
but that we wait so long to begin it.
- Anonymous

Nobody, as long as he moves about
among the chaotic currents of life,
is without trouble.
- Carl Jung

So long as we are loved by others,
I would almost say that we are indispensable;
and no man is useless while he has a friend.
- Robert Louis Stevenson

The health of the eye seems to demand a horizon.
We are never tired, so long as we can see far enough.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

If you don't enjoy your career,
today is the day to begin a long-term plan
for creating a career that interests and excites you.
And, in the short term, even if you hate your job,
look for small joys at work each day,
perhaps in your interactions with customers and co-workers.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

There are risks and costs to action.
But they are far less than the long range
risks of comfortable inaction.
- John F. Kennedy

The cost of a thing is the amount
of what I will call life
which is required to be exchanged for it,
immediately or in the long run.
- Henry David Thoreau

For once you have tasted flight
you will walk the earth
with your eyes turned skywards,
for there you have been
and there you will long to return.
- Leonardo da Vinci

Time stays long enough for anyone who will use it.
- Leonardo da Vinci

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Today is Your Day to Dance Lightly with Life.  It Really Is.
      - Jonathan Lockwood Huie