Francis Galton Quotes

#1. Well-washed and well-combed domestic pets grow dull; they miss the stimulus of fleas.

Francis Galton

#2. I do not so easily think in words ... after being hard at work having arrived at results that are perfectly clear ... I have to translate my thoughts in a language that does not run evenly with them.

Francis Galton

#3. It is always the case with the best work, that it is misrepresented, and disparaged at first, for it takes a curiously long time for new ideas to become current, and the older men who ought to be capable of taking them in freely, will not do so through prejudice.

Francis Galton

#4. Whenever you can, count.

Francis Galton

#5. Poor humanity! I often feel that the tableland of sanity upon which most of us dwell, is small in area, with unfenced precipices on every side, over any one of which we may fall.

Francis Galton

#6. Men who leave their mark on the world are very often those who, being gifted and full of nervous power, are at the same time haunted and driven by a dominant idea, and are therefore within a measurable distance of insanity.

Francis Galton

#7. Characteristics cling to families.

Francis Galton

#8. There is a steady check in an old civilisation upon the fertility of the abler classes: the improvident and unambitious are those who chiefly keep up the breed. So the race gradually deteriorates, becoming in each successive generation less fit for a high civilisation.

Francis Galton

#9. The phrase 'nature and nurture' is a convenient jingle of words, for it separates under two distinct heads the innumerable elements of which personality is composed. Nature is all that a man brings with himself into the world; nurture is every influence without that affects him after his birth.

Francis Galton

#10. What nature does blindly, slowly and ruthlessly, man may do providently, quickly, and kindly. As it lies within his power, so it becomes his duty to work in that direction.

Francis Galton

#11. The object ... is to discover methods of condensing information concerning large groups of allied facts into brief and compendious expressions suitable for discussion.

Francis Galton

#12. The cat is the only non-gregarious domestic animal. It is retained by its extra-ordinary adhesion to the comforts of the house in which it is reared.

Francis Galton

#13. Eugenics is the study of the agencies under social control that may improve or impair the racial qualities of future generations either physically or mentally.

Francis Galton

#14. The aim of eugenics is to represent each class or sect by its best specimens; that done, to leave them to work out their common civilization in their own way.

Francis Galton

#15. Exercising the right of occasional suppression and slight modification, it is truly absurd to see how plastic a limited number of observations become, in the hands of men with preconceived ideas.

Francis Galton

#16. Some mechanism ought to be devised for shaking elderly people in a healthful way, and in many directions.

Francis Galton