19 Quotes by Francis Galton

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.

Life is a republic where the individuals are for the most part unconscious that while they are working for themselves they are also working for the public good.

One of the effects of civilization is to diminish the rigour of the application of the law of natural selection. It preserves weakly lives that would have perished in barbarous lands.

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.

Characteristics cling to families.

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.

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

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.

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.