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

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

I love fools’ experiments. I am always making them.

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

In the long history of humankind (and animal kind, too) those who learned to collaborate and improvise most effectively have prevailed.

The forms of life throughout the universe become divided into groups subordinate to groups.

I love fools’ experiments. I am always making them.

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

Besides love and sympathy, animals exhibit other qualities connected with the social instincts which in us would be called moral.

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

I love fools’ experiments. I am always making them.

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.

If the misery of the poor be caused not by the laws of nature, but by our institutions, great is our sin.

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

It harmonizes ... with the view that there is no essential distinction between species and varieties.

The vigorous, the healthy, and the happy survive and multiply.

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

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

Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge.

If the misery of the poor be caused not by the laws of nature, but by our institutions, great is our sin.