# Quote — Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species

> Owing to this struggle for life, any variation, however slight and from whatever cause proceeding, if it be in any degree profitable to an individual of any species, in its infinitely complex relations to other organic beings and to external nature, will tend to the preservation of that individual, and will generally be inherited by its offspring. The offspring, also, will thus have a better chance of surviving, for, of the many individuals of any species which are periodically born, but a small number can survive. I have called this principle, by which each slight variation, if useful, is preserved, by the term of Natural Selection, in order to mark its relation to man's power of selection.

- Author: [Charles Darwin](https://www.leafyquotes.com/charles-darwin.md)
- Book: [On the Origin of Species](https://www.leafyquotes.com/charles-darwin/on-the-origin-of-species.md)
- Page: 61
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/On_the_Origin_of_Species#III._Struggle_for_Existence) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/charles-darwin/on-the-origin-of-species/owing-to-this

## More from this book

> I see no good reason why the views given in this volume should shock the religious feelings of any one.

p. 421 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/charles-darwin/on-the-origin-of-species/i-see-no-good.md)

> [T]he several classes of facts which have been considered in this chapter, seem to me to proclaim so plainly, that the innumerable species, genera, and families of organic beings, with which this world is peopled, have all descended, each within its own class or group, from common parents, and have all been modified in the course of descent, that I should without hesitation adopt this view, even if it were unsupported by other facts or arguments.

p. 457 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/charles-darwin/on-the-origin-of-species/t-he-several-classes.md)

> What can be more curious than that the hand of a man, formed for grasping, that of a mole for digging, the leg of the horse, the paddle of the porpoise, and the wing of the bat, should all be constructed on the same pattern, and should include the same bones, in the same relative positions? ... Hence the same names can be given to the homologous bones in widely different animals. We see the same great law in the construction of the mouths of insects: what can be more different than the immensely long spiral proboscis of a sphinx-moth, the curious folded one of a bee or bug, and the great jaws of a beetle?—yet all these organs, serving for such different purposes, are formed by infinitely numerous modifications of an upper lip, mandibles, and two pairs of maxillæ. Analogous laws govern the construction of the mouths and limbs of crustaceans. So it is with the flowers of plants. Nothing can be more hopeless than to attempt to explain this similarity of pattern in members of the same class, by utility or by the doctrine of final causes.

p. 434 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/charles-darwin/on-the-origin-of-species/what-can-be-more.md)