Francis Galton

The following question had been much in my mind. How is it possible for a population to remain alike in its features, as a whole, during many successive generations, if the average produce of each couple resemble their parents? Their …

All male animals, including men, when they are in love, are apt to behave in ways that seem ludicrous to bystanders.

A collection of living magnates in various branches of intellectual achievement is always a feast to my eyes; being, as they are, such massive, vigorous, capable-looking animals.

where the better sort of emigrants and refugees from other lands were invited and welcomed, and their descendants naturalized.

where the weak could find a welcome and a refuge in celibate monasteries or sisterhoods

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 …

Anthropologists, as a rule, are behindhand in their studies of men of superior types, who rank above the mediocrity of their race in every respect

at a date when the fixity of races was an established scientific belief. His central principle consequently was that the mean man is the perfect man. The theory of evolution now assures us of what common sense never doubted---that this …

The demand for exceptional ability, when combined with energy and good character, is so great that a lad who is gifted with them is hardly more likely to remain over looked than a bird’s nest in the playground of a school.

it showed the repressive effect of White civilization upon the Negroes

I do not plead guilty to a shallow view of human nature, when I propose to apply, as it were, a foot-rule to its heights and depths.

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.

Anthropology teaches us to sympathise with other races, and to regard them as kinsmen rather than aliens.

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.

Count wherever you can.