“I fully agree with all that you say on the advantages of H. Spencer's excellent expression of 'the survival of the fittest.'… — Charles Darwin Copy Share Image
I have called this principle, by which each slight variation, if useful, is preserved, by the term Natural Selection, in order to… — Charles Darwin Copy Share Image
In the struggle for survival, the fittest win out at the expense of their rivals because they succeed in adapting themselves best… — Charles Darwin Copy Share Image
This preservation of favourable variations and the destruction of injurious variations, I call Natural Selection, or the Survival of the Fittest. Variations… — Charles Darwin Copy Share Image
The expression often used by Mr. Herbert Spencer of the Survival of the Fittest is more accurate, and is sometimes equally convenient. — Charles Darwin Copy Share Image
“With savages, the weak in body or mind are soon eliminated; and those that survive commonly exhibit a vigorous state of health.… — Charles Darwin Copy Share Image
I fully agree with all that you say on the advantages of Spencer's excellent expression of 'the survival of the fittest.' This,… — Charles Darwin Copy Share Image
The love for all living creatures is the most noble attribute of man. — Charles Darwin Copy Share Image
The main conclusion here arrived at ... is that man is descended from some less highly organized form. — Charles Darwin Copy Share Image
So great is the economy of nature, that most flowers which are fertilised by crepuscular or nocturnal insects emit their odour chiefly or exclusively… — Charles Darwin Copy Share Image
I see no good reasons why the views given in this volume should shock the religious views of anyone. — Charles Darwin Copy Share Image
I am quite conscious that my speculations run beyond the bounds of true science....It is a mere rag of an hypothesis with as many… — Charles Darwin Copy Share Image
If worms have the power of acquiring some notion, however rude, of the shape of an object and over their burrows, as seems the… — Charles Darwin Copy Share Image
We can allow satellites, planets, suns, universe, nay whole systems of universes, to be governed by laws, but the smallest insect, we wish to… — Charles Darwin Copy Share Image
Formerly Milton's Paradise Lost had been my chief favourite, and in my excursions during the voyage of the Beagle, when I could take only… — Charles Darwin Copy Share Image
May we not suspect that the vague but very real fears of children, which are quite independent of experience, are the inherited effects of… — Charles Darwin Copy Share Image
It may be said that natural selection is daily and hourly scrutinizing, throughout the world, every variation, even the slightest; rejecting that which is… — Charles Darwin Copy Share Image
“Darwin, landing in Brazil in 1832, had a similar reaction, colored by his reading of his predecessor." Humboldt's glorious descriptions are & will for… — Charles Darwin Copy Share Image