"It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent, but rather the one most adaptable to change."
— Charles Darwin

January 1, 1970

Quote Details

Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Added on April 10, 2026
Unverified quote
0 likes
Naturalists from EnglandAgnosticsScience authorsBiologists from EnglandGeologists from England
Original Language: English

Sources

The earliest known appearance of this basic statement is a paraphrase of Darwin in the writings of Leon C. Megginson, a management sociologist at Louisiana State University. [] Megginson's paraphrase (with slight variations) was later turned into a quotation. See the summary of Nicholas Matzke's findings in "One thing Darwin didn't say: the source for a misquotation" at the Darwin Correspondence Project. The statement is incorrectly attributed, without any source, to Clarence Darrow in Improving