Charles Darwin Survival Quotations

The expression often used by Mr. Herbert Spencer of the Survival of the Fittest is more accurate, and is sometimes equally convenient.

It has been a bitter mortification for me to digest the conclusion that the "race is for the strong" and that I shall probably do little more but be content to admire the strides others made in science.

We will now discuss in a little more detail the Struggle for Existence.

Man tends to increase at a greater rate than his means of subsistence.

This preservation of favourable variations and the destruction of injurious variations, I call Natural Selection, or the Survival of the Fittest. Variations neither useful nor injurious would not be affected by natural selection and would be left a fluctuating element.

The survival or preservation of certain favoured words in the struggle for existence is natural selection.

It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change, that lives within the means available and works co-operatively against common threats.

The most important factor in survival is neither intelligence nor strength but adaptability.