“Great is the power of steady misrepresentation.”

The very essence of instinct is that it’s followed independently of reason.

Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge.

The most energetic workers I have encountered in my world travels are the vegetarian miners of Chile.

Building a better mousetrap merely results in smarter mice.

Often a cold shudder has run through me, and I have asked myself whether I may have not devoted myself to a fantasy.

Man, wonderful man, must collapse, into nature’s cauldron, he is no deity, he is no exception.

Even people who aren’t geniuses can outthink the rest of mankind if they develop certain thinking habits.

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

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

Man in his arrogance thinks himself a great work, worthy of the interposition of a deity. More humble, and I believe truer, to consider him created from animals.

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

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.

Man selects only for his own good: Nature only for that of the being which she tends.

We stopped looking for monsters under our bed when we realized that they were inside us.

Nothing exists for itself alone, but only in relation to other forms of life.

The most powerful natural species are those that adapt to environmental change without losing their fundamental identity which gives them their competitive advantage.