Happy Darwin Day!

Charles Darwin was born on February 12 1809 and on this day of his birth I decided to share some of his more famous quotes with you.

• Thus disbelief crept over me at a very slow rate, but was at last complete. The rate was so slow that I felt no distress, and have never since doubted for a single second that my conclusion was correct. I can indeed hardly see how anyone ought to wish Christianity to be true; for if so, the plain language of the text seems to show that the men who do not believe, and this would include my Father, Brother, and almost all my best friends, will be everlastingly punished. And this is a damnable doctrine....



• I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent and omnipotent God would have designedly created parasitic wasps with the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of Caterpillars.



• A man who dares to waste one hour of time has not discovered the value of life.



• False facts are highly injurious to the progress of science, for they often endure long; but false views, if supported by some evidence, do little harm, for every one takes a salutary pleasure in proving their falseness.



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



• Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, and not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science.



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



• We must, however, acknowledge, as it seems to me, that man with all his noble qualities... still bears in his bodily frame the indelible stamp of his lowly origin.



• 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.



• I am turned into a sort of machine for observing facts and grinding out conclusions.



• Believing as I do that man in the distant future will be a far more perfect creature than he now is, it is an intolerable thought that he and all other sentient beings are doomed to complete annihilation after such long-continued slow progress
  

So there you have it. Think about what you've read here and Happy Darwin Day