“Not one change of species into another is on record, we cannot prove that a single species has been changed.”

Such simple instincts as bees making a beehive could be sufficient to overthrow my whole theory.

In conclusion, it appears that nothing can be more improving to a young naturalist, than a journey in distant countries.

I am dying by inches, from not having any body to talk to about insects.

Light may be shed on man and his origins.

It is always advisable to perceive clearly our ignorance.

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

Attention, if sudden and close, graduates into surprise; and this into astonishment; and this into stupefied amazement.

I see no good reasons why the views given in this volume should shock the religious views of anyone.

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

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

We can allow satellites, planets, suns, universe, nay whole systems of universe, to be governed by laws, but the smallest insect, we wish to be created at once by special act.

For the shield may be as important for victory, as the sword or spear.

Thus we have given to man a pedigree of prodigious length, but not, it may be said, of noble quality.

The normal food of man is vegetable.

Some call it evolution, And others call it God.

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

Change is not progress.

It is a curious situation that the sea, from which life first arose, should now be threatened by the activities of one form of that life. But the sea, though changed in a sinister way, will continue to exist: the threat is rather to life itself.

One way to open your eyes is to ask yourself, “What if I had never seen this before? What if I knew i would never see it again?

Every great and deep difficulty bears in itself its own solution. It forces us to change our thinking in order to find it.

Real change will come when powerful women are less of an exception. It is easy to dislike senior women because there are so few.

I am a bad, wicked man, but I am practicing moral self-purification; I don’t eat meat any more, I now eat rice cutlets.

Give us a world where half our homes are run by men and half our institutions are run by women. I’m pretty sure that would be a better world.

Women need to shift form thinking “I’m not ready to do that” to thinking “I want to do that- and I’ll learn by doing it.