TODAY IN SCIENCE HISTORY ®  •  TODAYINSCI ®
Celebrating 24 Years on the Web
Find science on or your birthday

Today in Science History - Quickie Quiz
Who said: “Science without religion is lame; religion without science is blind.”
more quiz questions >>
Home > Dictionary of Science Quotations > Scientist Names Index D > Charles Darwin Quotes > God

Thumbnail of Charles Darwin (source)
Charles Darwin
(12 Feb 1809 - 19 Apr 1882)

English naturalist who presented facts to support his theory of the mode of evolution whereby favourable variations would survive which he called 'Natural Selection' or 'Survival of the Fittest.'



Among the scenes which are deeply impressed on my mind, none exceed in sublimity the primeval [tropical] forests, ... temples filled with the varied productions of the God of Nature. No one can stand in these solitudes unmoved, and not feel that there is more in man than the mere breath of his body.
— Charles Darwin
In What Mr. Darwin Saw in His Voyage Round the World in the Ship “Beagle” 1879, 170.
Science quotes on:  |  Body (557)  |  Breath (61)  |  Feel (371)  |  Fill (67)  |  Forest (161)  |  God (776)  |  Impress (66)  |  Impressed (39)  |  Impression (118)  |  Man (2252)  |  Mind (1377)  |  More (2558)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Primeval (15)  |  Production (190)  |  Rain Forest (34)  |  Scene (36)  |  Solitude (20)  |  Stand (284)  |  Sublimity (6)  |  Temple (45)  |  Various (205)

Among the scenes which are deeply impressed on my mind, none exceed in sublimity the primeval forests undefaced by the hand of man; whether those of Brazil, where the powers of Life are predominant, or those of Tierra del Fuego, where Death and Decay prevail. Both are temples filled with the varied productions of the God of Nature: no one can stand in these solitudes unmoved, and not feel that there is more in man than the mere breath of his body.
— Charles Darwin
Journal of Researches: into the Natural History and Geology of the Countries Visited During the Voyage of H.M.S. Beagle Round the World (1839), ch. XXIII, 604-5.
Science quotes on:  |  Beagle (14)  |  Body (557)  |  Both (496)  |  Breath (61)  |  Death (406)  |  Decay (59)  |  Feel (371)  |  Forest (161)  |  God (776)  |  Impress (66)  |  Impressed (39)  |  Life (1870)  |  Man (2252)  |  Mind (1377)  |  More (2558)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Power (771)  |  Prevail (47)  |  Primeval (15)  |  Production (190)  |  Scene (36)  |  Solitude (20)  |  Stand (284)  |  Temple (45)

It is impossible to answer your question briefly; and I am not sure that I could do so, even if I wrote at some length. But I may say that the impossibility of conceiving that this grand and wondrous universe, with our conscious selves, arose through chance, seems to me the chief argument for the existence of God; but whether this is an argument of real value, I have never been able to decide.
[Replying to query about his religious views]
— Charles Darwin
Letter to a Dutch student (2 Apr 1873), in Charles Darwin and Sir Francis Darwin (ed.), The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin (1896), 276.
Science quotes on:  |  Answer (389)  |  Argument (145)  |  Briefly (5)  |  Chance (244)  |  Chief (99)  |  Conceiving (3)  |  Conscious (46)  |  Decide (50)  |  Do (1905)  |  Existence (481)  |  God (776)  |  Grand (29)  |  Impossibility (60)  |  Impossible (263)  |  Never (1089)  |  Query (4)  |  Question (649)  |  Religious (134)  |  Say (989)  |  Science And Religion (337)  |  Self (268)  |  Through (846)  |  Universe (900)  |  Value (393)  |  View (496)  |  Wondrous (22)

Linnaeus and Cuvier have been my two gods, though in very different ways, but they were mere schoolboys to old Aristotle.
— Charles Darwin
Letter to W. Ogle (22 Feb 1882). In Charles Darwin and Francis Darwin (ed.), The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin (1896), 427.
Science quotes on:  |  Aristotle (179)  |  Baron Georges Cuvier (34)  |  Different (595)  |  God (776)  |  Carolus Linnaeus (36)  |  Old (499)  |  Schoolboy (9)  |  Two (936)  |  Way (1214)

Man may be excused for feeling some pride at having risen, though not through his own exertions, to the very summit of the organic scale; and the fact of his having thus risen, instead of having been aboriginally placed there, may give him hopes for a still higher destiny in the distant future. But we are not here concerned with hopes or fears, only with the truth as far as our reason allows us to discover it. I have given the evidence to the best of my ability; and we must acknowledge, as it seems to me, that man with all his noble qualities, with sympathy which feels for the most debased, with benevolence which extends not only to other men but to the humblest living creature, with his god-like intellect which has penetrated into the movements and constitution of the solar system—with all these exalted powers—Man still bears in his bodily frame the indelible stamp of his lowly origin.
— Charles Darwin
Concluding remarks. The Descent of Man (1871), Vol. 2, 405.
Science quotes on:  |  Ability (162)  |  Acknowledge (33)  |  Bear (162)  |  Benevolence (11)  |  Best (467)  |  Concern (239)  |  Constitution (78)  |  Creature (242)  |  Destiny (54)  |  Discover (571)  |  Evidence (267)  |  Evolution (635)  |  Exalt (29)  |  Exalted (22)  |  Extend (129)  |  Fact (1257)  |  Fear (212)  |  Feel (371)  |  Feeling (259)  |  Future (467)  |  God (776)  |  Hope (321)  |  Human Nature (71)  |  Humblest (4)  |  Intellect (251)  |  Living (492)  |  Man (2252)  |  Most (1728)  |  Movement (162)  |  Must (1525)  |  Noble (93)  |  Organic (161)  |  Origin (250)  |  Other (2233)  |  Power (771)  |  Pride (84)  |  Reason (766)  |  Scale (122)  |  Solar System (81)  |  Stamp (36)  |  Still (614)  |  Summit (27)  |  Sympathy (35)  |  System (545)  |  Through (846)  |  Truth (1109)

One more word on “designed laws” and “undesigned results.” - I see a bird which I want for food, take my gun and kill it, I do this designedly.—An innocent and good man stands under a tree and is killed by a flash of lightning. Do you believe (& I really should like to hear) that God designedly killed this man? Many or most persons do believe this; I can’t and don’t.—If you believe so, do you believe that when a swallow snaps up a gnat that God designed that that particular swallow should snap up that particular gnat at that particular instant? I believe that the man and the gnat are in the same predicament. If the death of neither man nor gnat are designed, I see no good reason to believe that their first birth or production should be necessarily designed.
— Charles Darwin
Letter to Asa Gray, 3 July 1860. In F. Burkhardt and S. Smith (eds.), The Correspondence of Charles Darwin 1860 (1993), Vol. 8, 275.
Science quotes on:  |  Bird (163)  |  Birth (154)  |  Death (406)  |  Design (203)  |  Destiny (54)  |  Do (1905)  |  First (1302)  |  Flash (49)  |  Food (213)  |  God (776)  |  Good (906)  |  Hear (144)  |  Instant (46)  |  Kill (100)  |  Law (913)  |  Lightning (49)  |  Man (2252)  |  More (2558)  |  Most (1728)  |  Necessarily (137)  |  Person (366)  |  Production (190)  |  Reason (766)  |  Result (700)  |  See (1094)  |  Snap (7)  |  Stand (284)  |  Swallow (32)  |  Tree (269)  |  Want (504)  |  Word (650)

Some few, & I am one, even wish to God, though at the loss of millions of lives, that the North would proclaim a crusade against Slavery. In the long run, a million horrid deaths would be amply repaid in the cause of humanity. ... Great God how I shd like to see that greatest curse on Earth Slavery abolished.
— Charles Darwin
Letter to Asa Gray (5 Jun 1861). In Charles Darwin, Frederick Burkhardt, Sydney Smith, The Correspondence of Charles Darwin: Vol. 9, 1861 (1994), xx. An attack by Confederate forces at Fort Sumter on 12 Apr 1861 marked the beginning of the American Civil war. In Sep 1862, President Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation made ending slavery in the South a goal of the war. (Lincoln and Darwin were born on the same day.)
Science quotes on:  |  Abolish (13)  |  Against (332)  |  Cause (561)  |  Crusade (6)  |  Curse (20)  |  Death (406)  |  Earth (1076)  |  God (776)  |  Great (1610)  |  Greatest (330)  |  Humanity (186)  |  In The Long Run (18)  |  Live (650)  |  Loss (117)  |  Proclaim (31)  |  See (1094)  |  Slavery (13)  |  Wish (216)

There seems to me too much misery in the world. I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent & omnipotent God would have designedly created the Ichneumonidae with the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of caterpillars, or that a cat should play with mice.
— Charles Darwin
Letter to Asa Gray (22 May 1860). In Charles Darwin and Francis Darwin (ed.), Charles Darwin: His Life Told in an Autobiographical Chapter, and in a Selected Series of His Published Letters (1892), 236. [Perhaps Darwin would have been interested to know that these parasitic wasps (Ichneumonidae, also known as Darwin wasps) have now been used for biological control of insect pests in orchards, crops and forests, with the benefit of reducing the need for harmful pesticides. —Webmaster]
Science quotes on:  |  Beneficent (9)  |  Cat (52)  |  Express (192)  |  Food Web (8)  |  God (776)  |  Intention (46)  |  Living (492)  |  Misery (31)  |  Myself (211)  |  Omnipotent (13)  |  World (1850)

This is the question
Marry
Children—(if it Please God)—Constant companion (& friend in old age) who will feel interested in one—object to be beloved and played with—better than a dog anyhow. Home, & someone to take care of house—Charms of music and female chit-chat.—These things good for one’s health.—but terrible loss of time.—
My God, it is Intolerable to think of spending ones whole life, like a neuter bee, working, working—& nothing after all.—No, no, won’t do. Imagine living all one’s day solitary in smoky dirty London House.—Only picture to yourself a nice soft wife on a sofa with good fire, & books & music perhaps-—Compare this vision with the dingy reality of Grt. Marlbro’ Street.
Not Marry
Freedom to go where one liked—choice of Society and little of it. —Conversation of clever men at clubs—Not forced to visit relatives, & to bend in every trifle. —to have the expense and anxiety of children—perhaps quarreling—Loss of time. —cannot read in the Evenings—fatness & idleness—Anxiety & responsibility—less money for books &c—if many children forced to gain one’s bread. —(but then it is very bad for ones health to work too much)
Perhaps my wife won’t like London; then the sentence is banishment & degradation into indolent, idle fool.
Marry—Marry—Marry Q.E.D.
It being proved necessary to Marry When? Soon or late?
— Charles Darwin
Notes on Marriage, July 1838. In F. Burkhardt and S. Smith (eds.), The Correspondence of Charles Darwin 1837-1843 (1986), Vol. 2, 444.
Science quotes on:  |  Age (509)  |  Anxiety (30)  |  Bad (185)  |  Bee (44)  |  Being (1276)  |  Better (493)  |  Biography (254)  |  Book (413)  |  Bread (42)  |  Care (203)  |  Charm (54)  |  Children (201)  |  Choice (114)  |  Clever (41)  |  Companion (22)  |  Compare (76)  |  Constant (148)  |  Conversation (46)  |  Degradation (18)  |  Dirty (17)  |  Do (1905)  |  Dog (70)  |  Feel (371)  |  Female (50)  |  Fire (203)  |  Fool (121)  |  Freedom (145)  |  Friend (180)  |  Gain (146)  |  God (776)  |  Good (906)  |  Health (210)  |  Home (184)  |  House (143)  |  Idle (34)  |  Idleness (15)  |  Imagine (176)  |  Interest (416)  |  Late (119)  |  Life (1870)  |  Little (717)  |  Living (492)  |  Loss (117)  |  Marriage (39)  |  Money (178)  |  Music (133)  |  Necessary (370)  |  Nothing (1000)  |  Object (438)  |  Old (499)  |  Old Age (35)  |  Picture (148)  |  Please (68)  |  Question (649)  |  Read (308)  |  Reality (274)  |  Responsibility (71)  |  Society (350)  |  Soft (30)  |  Soon (187)  |  Spending (24)  |  Terrible (41)  |  Thing (1914)  |  Think (1122)  |  Time (1911)  |  Vision (127)  |  Whole (756)  |  Wife (41)  |  Will (2350)  |  Work (1402)


See also:
  • 12 Feb - short biography, births, deaths and events on date of Darwin's birth.
  • Charles Darwin - context of quote “If the misery of our poor be caused not by the laws of nature…” - Medium image (500 x 350 px)
  • Charles Darwin - context of quote “If the misery of our poor be caused not by the laws of nature…” - Large image (800 x 600 px)
  • Charles Darwin - context of quote “Improving…a young naturalist” - Medium image (500 x 350 px)
  • Charles Darwin - context of quote “Improving…a young naturalist” - Large image (800 x 600 px)
  • Charles Darwin - context of quote “Great is the power of steady misrepresentation” - Medium image (500 x 350 px)
  • Charles Darwin - context of quote “Great is the power of steady misrepresentation” - Large image (800 x 600 px)
  • Charles Darwin - context of quote “This…I call Natural Selection, or the Survival of the Fittest” - Medium image (500 x 350 px)
  • Charles Darwin - context of quote “This…I call Natural Selection, or the Survival of the Fittest” - Large image (800 x 600 px)
  • Charles Darwin - Earthquake observation on 20 Feb 1835, during the voyage of the Beagle.
  • Letter to Asa Gray - from Charles Darwin (5 Sep 1857).
  • From So Simple a Beginning: Darwin's Four Great Books, by Charles Darwin, Edward O. Wilson. - book suggestion.
  • Booklist for Charles Darwin.

Carl Sagan Thumbnail In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion. (1987) -- Carl Sagan
Quotations by:Albert EinsteinIsaac NewtonLord KelvinCharles DarwinSrinivasa RamanujanCarl SaganFlorence NightingaleThomas EdisonAristotleMarie CurieBenjamin FranklinWinston ChurchillGalileo GalileiSigmund FreudRobert BunsenLouis PasteurTheodore RooseveltAbraham LincolnRonald ReaganLeonardo DaVinciMichio KakuKarl PopperJohann GoetheRobert OppenheimerCharles Kettering  ... (more people)

Quotations about:Atomic  BombBiologyChemistryDeforestationEngineeringAnatomyAstronomyBacteriaBiochemistryBotanyConservationDinosaurEnvironmentFractalGeneticsGeologyHistory of ScienceInventionJupiterKnowledgeLoveMathematicsMeasurementMedicineNatural ResourceOrganic ChemistryPhysicsPhysicianQuantum TheoryResearchScience and ArtTeacherTechnologyUniverseVolcanoVirusWind PowerWomen ScientistsX-RaysYouthZoology  ... (more topics)
Sitewide search within all Today In Science History pages:
Visit our Science and Scientist Quotations index for more Science Quotes from archaeologists, biologists, chemists, geologists, inventors and inventions, mathematicians, physicists, pioneers in medicine, science events and technology.

Names index: | A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J | K | L | M | N | O | P | Q | R | S | T | U | V | W | X | Y | Z |

Categories index: | 1 | 2 | A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J | K | L | M | N | O | P | Q | R | S | T | U | V | W | X | Y | Z |
Thank you for sharing.
- 100 -
Sophie Germain
Gertrude Elion
Ernest Rutherford
James Chadwick
Marcel Proust
William Harvey
Johann Goethe
John Keynes
Carl Gauss
Paul Feyerabend
- 90 -
Antoine Lavoisier
Lise Meitner
Charles Babbage
Ibn Khaldun
Euclid
Ralph Emerson
Robert Bunsen
Frederick Banting
Andre Ampere
Winston Churchill
- 80 -
John Locke
Bronislaw Malinowski
Bible
Thomas Huxley
Alessandro Volta
Erwin Schrodinger
Wilhelm Roentgen
Louis Pasteur
Bertrand Russell
Jean Lamarck
- 70 -
Samuel Morse
John Wheeler
Nicolaus Copernicus
Robert Fulton
Pierre Laplace
Humphry Davy
Thomas Edison
Lord Kelvin
Theodore Roosevelt
Carolus Linnaeus
- 60 -
Francis Galton
Linus Pauling
Immanuel Kant
Martin Fischer
Robert Boyle
Karl Popper
Paul Dirac
Avicenna
James Watson
William Shakespeare
- 50 -
Stephen Hawking
Niels Bohr
Nikola Tesla
Rachel Carson
Max Planck
Henry Adams
Richard Dawkins
Werner Heisenberg
Alfred Wegener
John Dalton
- 40 -
Pierre Fermat
Edward Wilson
Johannes Kepler
Gustave Eiffel
Giordano Bruno
JJ Thomson
Thomas Kuhn
Leonardo DaVinci
Archimedes
David Hume
- 30 -
Andreas Vesalius
Rudolf Virchow
Richard Feynman
James Hutton
Alexander Fleming
Emile Durkheim
Benjamin Franklin
Robert Oppenheimer
Robert Hooke
Charles Kettering
- 20 -
Carl Sagan
James Maxwell
Marie Curie
Rene Descartes
Francis Crick
Hippocrates
Michael Faraday
Srinivasa Ramanujan
Francis Bacon
Galileo Galilei
- 10 -
Aristotle
John Watson
Rosalind Franklin
Michio Kaku
Isaac Asimov
Charles Darwin
Sigmund Freud
Albert Einstein
Florence Nightingale
Isaac Newton


by Ian Ellis
who invites your feedback
Thank you for sharing.
Today in Science History
Sign up for Newsletter
with quiz, quotes and more.