I have steadily endeavored to keep my mind free so as to give up any hypothesis, however much beloved (and I cannot resist forming one on every subject), as soon as the facts are shown to be opposed to it.

More from Charles Darwin

• I am not very skeptical... a good deal of skepticism in a scientific man is advisable to avoid much loss of time, but I have met not a few men, who... have often thus been deterred from experiments or observations which would have proven servicable.
• I love fools' experiments, I am always making them.
• In the long history of humankind (and animal kind, too) those who learned to collaborate and improvise most effectively have prevailed.
• Accept loss forever
• A change in the weather is sufficient to recreate the world and ourselves.
• A chief event of life is the day in which we have encountered a mind that startled us.