Who said only the strong survive

Janet Rebhan. Catherynne M. Robert J. Sawyer , Calculating God. Mark Twain. Charles Darwin , The Origin of Species. Leonard Darwin. Israelmore Ayivor. Muhammad Imran Hasan. Herbert Spencer. Francis Maitland Balfour. Charles Darwin. Theodosius Dobzhansky. Pierre-Louis Moreau De Maupertuis. Kim Stanley Robinson. In human terms, most ethical There is no strength to be gained from hurting one another. Only weakness. We civilised men, on the other hand, do our utmost to check the process of elimination; we build asylums for the imbecile, the maimed, and the sick; we institute poor-laws; and our medical men exert their utmost skill to save the life of every one to the last moment.

There is reason to believe that vaccination has preserved thousands, who from a weak constitution would formerly have succumbed to small-pox. Thus the weak members of civilised societies propagate their kind. Explore the letters to and from Charles Darwin over time. Search site. International students Continuing education Executive and professional education Courses in education. Research at Cambridge. For the curious Search form Search. The evolution of a misquotation. This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser.

Winter storm leaves millions of Texas residents without electricity. Related Topics. Published 17 February. Published 16 February. Published 14 February. Published 29 January. Published 31 January Sign in with Facebook Sign in options. Join Goodreads. Quotes tagged as "survival-of-the-fittest" Showing of In human terms, most ethical There is no strength to be gained from hurting one another.

Only weakness. Le Guin. We civilised men, on the other hand, do our utmost to check the process of elimination; we build asylums for the imbecile, the maimed, and the sick; we institute poor-laws; and our medical men exert their utmost skill to save the life of every one to the last moment. There is reason to believe that vaccination has preserved thousands, who from a weak constitution would formerly have succumbed to small-pox.

Thus the weak members of civilised societies propagate their kind. No one who has attended to the breeding of domestic animals will doubt that this must be highly injurious to the race of man. It is surprising how soon a want of care, or care wrongly directed, leads to the degeneration of a domestic race; but excepting in the case of man himself, hardly any one is so ignorant as to allow his worst animals to breed. The aid which we feel impelled to give to the helpless is mainly an incidental result of the instinct of sympathy, which was originally acquired as part of the social instincts, but subsequently rendered, in the manner previously indicated, more tender and more widely diffused.

Nor could we check our sympathy, if so urged by hard reason, without deterioration in the noblest part of our nature. The surgeon may harden himself whilst performing an operation, for he knows that he is acting for the good of his patient; but if we were intentionally to neglect the weak and helpless, it could only be for a contingent benefit, with a certain and great present evil.

Hence we must bear without complaining the undoubtedly bad effects of the weak surviving and propagating their kind; but there appears to be at least one check in steady action, namely the weaker and inferior members of society not marrying so freely as the sound; and this check might be indefinitely increased, though this is more to be hoped for than expected, by the weak in body or mind refraining from marriage.

Indeed, science would be impossible if our intelligence were not adapted to the intelligibility of the world. The match between our intelligence and the intelligibility of the world is no accident. Nor can it properly be attributed to natural selection, which places a premium on survival and reproduction and has no stake in truth or conscious thought.

Indeed, meat-puppet robots are just fine as the output of a Darwinian evolutionary process.