I have always been Darwin’s bulldog.

[ Replying to Bishop Samuel Wilberforce in their debate on Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution, Oxford, England, 30 June 1860 :] A man has no reason to be ashamed of having an ape for his grandfather. If there were an ancestor whom I should feel shame in recalling it would rather be a man —a man of restless and versatile intellect—who, not content with an equivocal success in his own sphere of activity, plunges into scientific questions with which he has no real acquaintance, only to obscure them with an aimless rhetoric, and distract the attention of his hearers from the real point at issue by eloquent digressions and skilled appeals to religious prejudice.

Truly it has been said, that to a clear eye the smallest fact is a window through which the Infinite may be seen.

My reflection, when I first made myself master of the central idea of the “Origin” [Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species ], was, “How extremely stupid not to have thought of that!”

Science is, I believe, nothing but trained and organised common sense , differing from the latter only as a veteran may differ from a raw recruit: and its methods differ from those of common sense only so far as the guardsman’s cut and thrust differ from the manner in which a savage wields his club.

Size is not grandeur, and territory does not make a nation.

If individuality has no play, society does not advance; if individuality breaks out of all bounds, society perishes.

The thief and the murderer follow nature just as much as the philanthropist.

There is the greatest practical benefit in making a few failures early in life.

That man, I think, has had a liberal education, who has been so trained in youth that his body is the ready servant of his will.