evidence: Charles Darwin accomplished a major milestone not just in biology, but in all of science with his publication of "On The Origin of Species." However many claims that Darwin, himself, claimed that his theory could be summarized by simply stating "Survival of the Fittest." A phrase that he himself never used and was in fact an attempt to slander his theory. We’ll get to the who, when, and why of such a claim but in short: no, Charles Darwin never said that evolution is "survival of the fittest." Simply stating the year and the location of the claimed utterance would do little to shed light on how this phrase first came to be used. First, no Darwin never said it. Second, to fully explain why the quote came about one needs to understand both a little about evolution and the existing moral authorities that regulated truth in the times of Darwin. [...] Finally returning to the etymology of the fake quote, a wonderful synopsis was done by the Darwin Project. A project that, among other things, tracks down fake quotes misattributed (or entirely fabricated by the legendary evolutionary biologist. The quote began as a paraphrase of the original text by Leon C. Megginson who argued that Darwin’s theory was not about intelligence or strength but "the species that survives is the one that is able best to adapt." The quote started off as a casual interpretaiton of Evoloution and then took on a life of its own from there.