Charles Darwin on man's noble qualities and humble roots

Man with all his noble qualities, with sympathy which feels for the most debased, with benevolence which extends not only to other men but to the humblest living creature, with his god-like intellect which has penetrated into the movements and constitution of the solar system - with all these exalted powers - Man still bears in his bodily frame the indelible stamp of his lowly origin.

~ Charles Darwin

Charles Darwin on survival and adaptability

It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.

~ Charles Darwin

Charles Darwin on "survival of the fittest"

Can we doubt (remembering that many more individuals are born than can possibly survive) that individuals having any advantage, however slight, over others would have the best chance of surviving and procreating their kind? On the other hand, we may feel sure that any variation in the least degree injurious would be rigidly destroyed. This preservation of favourable individual differences and variations, and the destruction of those which are injurious, I have called Natural Selection, or the Survival of the Fittest.

~ Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species (1859)