To kill an error is as good a service as, and sometimes even better than, the establishing of a new truth or fact.

—Charles Darwin

truth knowledge

About Charles Darwin

Portrait of Charles Darwin

Charles Robert Darwin ( DAR-win; 12 February 1809 – 19 April 1882) was an English naturalist, geologist, and biologist, widely known for his contributions to evolutionary biology. His proposition that all species have descended from a common ancestor is now accepted and considered a fundamental scientific concept. In a joint...

More quotations from Charles Darwin

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

—Charles Darwin

reason instinct

My mind has changed during the last twenty or thirty years. Now for many years I cannot endure to read a line of poetry. I have also almost lost my taste for pictures or music. My mind seems to have become a kind of machine for grinding general laws out of large collections of facts.
If I had to live my life again, I would have made a rule to read some poetry and listen to some music at least once every week. The loss of these tastes is a loss of happiness.

—Charles Darwin

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

—Charles Darwin

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

—Charles Darwin

It has often and confidently been asserted, that man's origin can never be known: but 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.

—Charles Darwin in The Descent of Man

ignorance knowledge science

More quotations tagged with “knowledge”

The ability to destroy your ideas rapidly instead of slowly when the occasion is right is one of the most valuable things. You have to work hard on it. Ask yourself what are the arguments on the other side. It’s bad to have an opinion you’re proud of if you can’t state the arguments for the other side better than your opponents. This is a great mental discipline.

—Charlie Munger

opinion learning knowledge discipline

No one is ever who you want them to be. And the less you really know them, the more likely you are to confuse them with the girl or boy in your head.

—Rachel Cohn in Dash & Lily’s Book of Dares

others knowledge aspiration confusion

There is a coherent plan in the universe, though I don't know what it's a plan for.

future knowledge universe plans

Civilization is the process of reducing the infinite to the finite.

—Oliver Wendell Holmes

knowledge certainty infinite civilization

Everybody gets so much information all day long that they lose their common sense.

—Gertrude Stein

knowledge information common sense

History

1 Oct 2014 Added