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 everyone takes a salutory pleasure in proving their falseness.
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I have called this principle, by which each slight variation, if useful, is preserved, by the term of Natural Selection.
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Man is descended from a hairy, tailed quadruped, probably arboreal in its habits.
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The assumed instinctive belief in God has been used by many persons as an argument for His existence. But this is a rash argument, as we should thus be compelled to believe in the existence of cruel and malignant spirits, only a little more powerful than man for the belief in them is far more general than in a beneficent Diety.
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If the misery of the poor be caused not by the laws of nature, but by our institutions, great is our sin.
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It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent it is the one that is most adaptable to change.
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The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.
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