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Mix Salt And Sand, And It Shall Puzzle The Wisest Of Men, With His Mere Natural Appliances, To Separate All The Grains Of Sand From All The Grains Of Salt; But A Shower Of Rain Will Effect The Same Object In Ten Minutes.

-Thomas Huxley

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Mix Salt And Sand,

Thomas Huxley

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Mix Salt And Sand, And It Shall Puzzle The Wisest Of Men, With His Mere Natural Appliances, To Separate All The Grains Of Sand From All The Grains Of Salt; But A Shower Of Rain Will Effect The Same Object In Ten Minutes.

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If The Twentieth Century Is To Be Better Than The Nineteenth, It Will Be Because There Are Among Us Men Who Walk In Priestley's Footsteps....to All Eternity, The Sum Of Truth And Right Will Have Been Increased By Their Means; To All Eternity, Falsehoods And Injustice Will Be The Weaker Because They Have Lived.

The Birth Of Science Was The Death Of Superstition.

Agnosticism Simply Means That A Man Shall Not Say That He Knows Or Believes That For Which He Has No Grounds For Professing To Believe.

I Conceive That The Leading Characteristic Of The Nineteenth Century Has Been The Rapid Growth Of The Scientific Spirit, The Consequent Application Of Scientific Methods Of Investigation To All The Problems With Which The Human Mind Is Occupied, And The Correlative Rejection Of Traditional Beliefs Which Have Proved Their Incompetence To Bear Such Investigation.

People May Talk About Intellectual Teaching, But What We Principally Want Is The Moral Teaching.

Mr. Darwin's Hypothesis Is Not, So Far As I Am Aware, Inconsistent With Any Known Biological Fact; On The Contrary, If Admitted, The Facts Of Development, Of Comparative Anatomy, Of Geographical Distribution, And Of Palaeontology, Become Connected Together, And Exhibit A Meaning Such As They Never Possessed Before; And I, For One, Am Fully Convinced That If Not Precisely True, That Hypothesis Is As Near An Approximation To The Truth As, For Example, The Copernican Hypothesis Was To The True Theory Of The Planetary Motions.

It Is Because The Body Is A Machine That Education Is Possible. Education Is The Formation Of Habits, A Superinducing Of An Artificial Organization Upon The Natural Organization Of The Body.

Unfortunately, It Is Much Easier To Shut One's Eyes To Good Than To Evil. Pain And Sorrow Knock At Our Doors More Loudly Than Pleasure And Happiness; And The Prints Of Their Heavy Footsteps Are Less Easily Effaced.

The Population Question Is The Real Riddle Of The Sphinx, To Which No Political Oedipus Has As Yet Found The Answer. In View Of The Ravages Of The Terrible Monster Over-multiplication, All Other Riddle Sink Into Insignificance.

I Know No Study Which Is So Unutterably Saddening As That Of The Evolution Of Humanity, As It Is Set Forth In The Annals Of History. Out Of The Darkness Of Prehistoric Ages Man Emerges With The Marks Of His Lowly Origin Strong Upon Him. He Is A Brute, Only More Intelligent Than The Other Brutes, A Blind Prey To Impulses, Which As Often As Not Led Him To Destruction; A Victim To Endless Illusions, Which Make His Mental Existence A Terror And A Burden, And Fill His Physical Life With Barren Toil And Battle.

Perhaps No Order Of Mammals Presents Us With So Extraordinary A Series Of Gradations As This [step By Step, From Humans To Apes To Monkeys To Lemurs] - Leading Us Insensibly From The Crown And Summit Of The Animal Creation Down To Creatures, From Which There Is But A Step, As It Seems, To The Lowest, Smallest, And Least Intelligent Of The Placental Mammalia. It Is As If Nature Herself Had Forseen The Arrogance Of Man, And With Roman Severity Had Provided That His Intellect, By Its Very Triumphs, Should Call Into Prominence The Slaves, Admonishing The Conqueror That He Is But Dust.

Claiming My Right To Follow Whethersoever Science Should Lead... It Is As Respectable To Be Modified Monkey As Modified Dirt.

Of The Few Innocent Pleasures Left To Men Past Middle Life, The Jamming Of Common Sense Down The Throats Of Fools Is Perhaps The Keenest.

The Struggle For Existence Holds As Much In The Intellectual As In The Physical World. A Theory Is A Species Of Thinking, And Its Right To Exist Is Coextensive With Its Power Of Resisting Extinction By Its Rivals.

In Truth, The Laboratory Is The Forecourt Of The Temple Of Philosophy, And Whoso Has Not Offered Sacrifices And Undergone Purification There Has Little Chance Of Admission Into The Sanctuary.

The Facts Of Variability, Of The Struggle For Existence, Of Adaptation To Conditions, Were Notorious Enough; But None Of Us Had Suspected That The Road To The Heart Of The Species Problem Lay Through Them, Until Darwin And Wallace Dispelled The Darkness.

My Reflection, When I First Made Myself Master Of The Central Idea Of The 'origin', Was, 'how Extremely Stupid Not To Have Thought Of That!'

The Chess-board Is The World, The Pieces Are The Phenomena Of The Universe, The Rules Of The Game Are What We Call The Laws Of Nature. The Player On The Other Side Is Hidden From Us.

It Is Far Better For A Man To Go Wrong In Freedom Than To Go Right In Chains.

I Really See No Harm Which Can Come Of Giving Our Children A Little Knowledge Of Physiology. ... The Instruction Must Be Real, Based Upon Observation, Eked Out By Good Explanatory Diagrams And Models, And Conveyed By A Teacher Whose Own Knowledge Has Been Acquired By A Study Of The Facts; And Not The Mere Catechismal Parrot-work Which Too Often Usurps The Place Of Elementary Teaching.

The Occurrence Of Successive Forms Of Life Upon Our Globe Is An Historical Fact, Which Cannot Be Disputed; And The Relation Of These Successive Forms, As Stages Of Evolution Of The Same Type, Is Established In Various Cases.

Every Great Advance In Natural Knowledge Has Involved The Absolute Rejection Of Authority.

Authority And Power

The Man Who Is All Morality And Intellect, Although He May Be Good And Even Great, Is, After All, Only Half A Man.

Creation,' In The Ordinary Sense Of The Word, Is Perfectly Conceivable. I Find No Difficulty In Conceiving That, At Some Former Period, This Universe Was Not In Existence, And That It Made Its Appearance In Six Days (or Instantaneously, If That Is Preferred), In Consequence Of The Volition Of Some Preexisting Being.

I Cannot But Think That He Who Finds A Certain Proportion Of Pain And Evil Inseparably Woven Up In The Life Of The Very Worms, Will Bear His Own Share With More Courage And Submission.

As I Have Already Urged, The Practice Of That Which Is Ethically Best - What We Call Goodness Or Virtue - Involves A Course Of Conduct Which, In All Respects, Is Opposed To That Which Leads To Success In The Cosmic Struggle For Existence. In Place Of Ruthless Selfassertion It Demands Self-restraint; In Place Of Thrusting Aside, Or Treading Down, All Competitors, It Requires That The Individual Shall Not Merely Respect , But Shall Help His Fellows. It Repudiates The Gladiatorial Theory Of Existence. Laws And Moral Precepts Are Directed To The End Of Curbing The Cosmic Process.

Proclaim Human Equality As Loudly As You Like, Witless Will Serve His Brother.

It Is One Of The Most Saddening Things In Life That, Try As We May, We Can Never Be Certain Of Making People Happy, Whereas We Can Almost Always Be Certain Of Making Them Unhappy.

There Are Some Men Who Are Counted Great Because They Represent The Actuality Of Their Own Age, And Mirror It As It Is. Such An One Was Voltaire, Of Whom It Was Epigrammatically Said: "he Expressed Everybody's Thoughts Better Than Anyone." But There Are Other Men Who Attain Greatness Because They Embody The Potentiality Of Their Own Day And Magically Reflect The Future. They Express The Thoughts Which Will Be Everybody's Two Or Three Centuries After Them. Such As One Was Descartes.

A Drop Of Water Is As Powerful As A Thunder-bolt.

No One Can Help Another Very Much In These Crises Of Life; But Love And Sympathy Count For Something.

Irrationally Held Truths May Be More Harmful Than Reasoned Errors.

Nothing Great In Science Has Ever Been Done By Men, Whatever Their Powers, In Whom The Divine Afflatus Of The Truth-seeker Was Wanting.

Sit Down Before Fact As A Little Child, Be Prepared To Give Up Every Conceived Notion, Follow Humbly Wherever And Whatever Abysses Nature Leads, Or You Will Learn Nothing.

Science Is Nothing, But Trained And Organized Common Sense.

Give Unqualified Assent To No Propositions But Those The Truth Of Which Is So Clear And Distinct That They Cannot Be Doubted. The Enunciation Of This First Great Commandment Of Science Consecrated Doubt.

I Take It That The Good Of Mankind Means The Attainment, By Every Man, Of All The Happiness Which He Can Enjoy Without Diminishing The Happiness Of His Fellow Men

What Men Need Is, As Much Knowledge As They Can Assimilate And Organize Into A Basis For Action; Give Them More And It May Become Injurious. One Knows People Who Are As Heavy And Stupid From Undigested Learning .

There Is Assuredly No More Effectual Method Of Clearing Up One's Own Mind On Any Subject Than By Talking It Over, So To Speak, With Men Of Real Power And Grasp, Who Have Considered It From A Totally Different Point Of View.

Protoplasm, Simple Or Nucleated, Is The Formal Basis Of All Life. It Is The Clay Of The Potter: Which, Bake It And Paint It As Hewill, Remains Clay, Separated By Artifice, And Not By Nature From The Commonest Brick Or Sun-dried Clod.

That Which Endures Is Not One Or Another Association Of Living Forms, But The Process Of Which The Cosmos Is The Product, And Of Which These Are Among The Transitory Expressions.

In Matters Of Intellect, Follow Your Reason As Far As It Will Take You, Without Regard For Any Other Consideration.

Not Only Do I Disbelieve In The Need For Compensation, But I Believe That The Seeking For Rewards And Punishments Out Of This Lifeleads Men To A Ruinous Ignorance Of The Fact That Their Inevitable Rewards And Punishments Are Here.

Science Is Simply Common Sense At Its Best.

Genius, As An Explosive Power, Beats Gunpowder Hollow.

I Have Never Had The Least Sympathy With The A Priori Reasons Against Orthodoxy, And I Have By Nature And Disposition The Greatest Possible Antipathy To All The Atheistic And Infidel School. Nevertheless I Know That I Am, In Spite Of Myself, Exactly What The Christian Would Call, And, So Far As I Can See, Is Justified In Calling, Atheist And Infidel.

The Method Of Scientific Investigation Is Nothing But The Expression Of The Necessary Mode Of Working Of The Human Mind.

Scientific Method

And When You Cannot Prove That People Are Wrong, But Only That They Are Absurd, The Best Course Is To Let Them Alone.

The Scientific Imagination Always Restrains Itself Within The Limits Of Probability.

I Cannot Say That I Am In The Slightest Degree Impressed By Your Bigness, Or Your Material Resources, As Such. Size Is Not Grandeur, And Territory Does Not Make A Nation. The Great Issue, About Which Hangs True Sublimity, And The Terror Of Overhanging Fate, Is What Are You Going To Do With All These Things?

The More Rapidly Truth Is Spread Among Mankind The Better It Will Be For Them. Only Let Us Be Sure That It Is The Truth.

Better Live A Crossing-sweeper Than Die And Be Made To Talk Twaddle By A "medium" Hired At A Guinea A Seance.

Only One Absolute Certainty Is Possible To Man, Namely That At Any Given Moment The Feeling Which He Has Exists.

Absolute Certainty

In Science, As In Art, And, As I Believe, In Every Other Sphere Of Human Activity, There May Be Wisdom In A Multitude Of Counsellors, But It Is Only In One Or Two Of Them.

Economy Does Not Lie In Sparing Money, But In Spending It Wisely.

The Question Of All Questions For Humanity, The Problem Which Lies Behind All Others And Is More Interesting Than Any Of Them, Is That Of The Determination Of Man's Place In Nature And His Relation To The Cosmos.

... Our "physick" And "anatomy" Have Embraced Such Infinite Varieties Of Being, Have Laid Open Such New Worlds In Time And Space, Have Grappled, Not Unsuccessfully, With Such Complex Problems, That The Eyes Of Vesalius And Of Harvey Might Be Dazzled By The Sight Of The Tree That Has Grown Out Of Their Grain Of Mustard Seed.

The Secret Of Genius Is To Carry The Spirit Of Childhood Into Maturity.

I Hated Tobacco. I Could Have Almost Lent My Support To Any Institution That Had For Its Object The Putting Of Tobacco Smokers To Death...i Now Feel That Smoking In Moderation Is A Comfortable And Laudable Practice, And Is Productive Of Good. There Is No More Harm In A Pipe Than In A Cup Of Tea. You May Poison Yourself By Drinking Too Much Green Tea, And Kill Yourself By Eating Too Many Beefsteaks. For My Part, I Consider That Tobacco, In Moderation, Is A Sweetener And Equalizer Of The Temper.

Thoughtfulness For Others, Generosity, Modesty, And Self-respect Are The Qualities Which Make A Real Gentleman Or Lady.

What Would Become Of The Garden If The Gardener Treated All The Weeds And Slugs And Birds And Trespassers As He Would Like To Be Treated, If He Were In Their Place?

Extinguished Theologians Lie About The Cradle Of Every Science, As Strangled Snakes Beside That Of Hercules

There Is The Greatest Practical Benefit In Making A Few Failures Early In Life.

There Is No Sea More Dangerous Than The Ocean Of Practical Politics None In Which There Is More Need Of Good Pilotage And Of A Single, Unfaltering Purpose When The Waves Rise High.

Deduction, Which Takes Us From The General Proposition To Facts Again-teaches Us, If I May So Say, To Anticipate From The Ticket What Is Inside The Bundle.

The Foundation Of All Morality Is To Have Done, Once And For All, With Lying; To Give Up Pretending To Believe That For Which There Is No Evidence, And Repeating Unintelligible Propositions About Things Beyond The Possibilities Of Knowledge.

We Are Prone To See What Lies Behind Our Eyes, Rather Than What Apprears Before Them.

I Do Not Say Think As I Think, But Think In My Way. Fear No Shadows, Least Of All In That Great Spectre Of Personal Unhappiness Which Binds Half The World To Orthodoxy.

The Only Objections That Have Occurred To Me Are, 1st That You Have Loaded Yourself With An Unnecessary Difficulty In Adopting Natura Non Facit Saltum So Unreservedly. . . . And 2nd, It Is Not Clear To Me Why, If Continual Physical Conditions Are Of So Little Moment As You Suppose, Variation Should Occur At All. However, I Must Read The Book Two Or Three Times More Before I Presume To Begin Picking Holes.

'infidel' Is A Term Of Reproach, Which Christians And Mohammedans, In Their Modesty, Agree To Apply To Those Who Differ From Them.

Logical Consequences Are The Scarecrows Of Fools And The Beacons Of Wise Men.

For Every Man The World Is As Fresh As It Was At The First Day, And As Full Of Untold Novelties For Him Who Has The Eyes To See Them.

It Ought Not To Be Unpleasant To Say That Which One Honestly Believes Or Disbelieves. That It So Constantly Is Painful To Do So, Is Quite Enough Obstacle To The Progress Of Mankind In That Most Valuable Of All Qualities, Honesty Of Word Or Of Deed.

The Great End Of Life Is Not Knowledge But Action.

If The Perpetual Oscillation Of Nations Between Anarchy And Despotism Is To Be Replaced By The Steady March Of Self-restraining Freedom, It Will Be Because Men Will Gradually Bring Themselves To Deal With Political, As They Now Deal With Scientific Questions.

Not Far From The Invention Of Fire We Must Rank The Invention Of Doubt.

I Have Endeavoured To Show That No Absolute Structural Line Of Demarcation, Wider Than That Between The Animals Which Immediately Succeed Us In The Scale, Can Be Drawn Between The Animal World And Ourselves; And I May Add The Expression Of My Belief That The Attempt To Draw A Physical Distinction Is Equally Futile, And That Even The Highest Faculties Of Feeling And Of Intellect Begin To Germinate In Lower Forms Of Life.

Of Moral Purpose I See No Trace In Nature. That Is An Article Of Exclusively Human Manufacture And Very Much To Our Credit.

We Live In A World Which Is Full Of Misery And Ignorance, And The Plain Duty Of Each And All Of Us Is To Try To Make The Little Corner He Can Influence Somewhat Less Miserable And Somewhat Less Ignorant Than It Was Before He Entered.

Can Any One Deny That The Old Israelites Conceived Jahveh Not Only In The Image Of A Man, But In That Of A Changeable, Irritable, And, Occasionally, Violent Man?

I Doubt The Fact, To Begin With, But If It Be So Even, What Is This But In Grand Words Asking Me To Believe A Thing Because I Like It.

Men Can Intoxicate Themselves With Ideas As Effectually As With Alcohol Or With Bang And Produce, Be Dint Of Serious Thinking, Mental Conditions Hardly Distinguishable From Monomania.

Every Living Creature Commences Its Existence Under A Form Different From, And Simpler Than, That Which It Eventually Attains.

Common Sense Is Science Exactly In So Far As It Fulfills The Ideal Of Common Sense; That Is, Sees Facts As They Are, Or At Any Rate, Without The Distortion Of Prejudice, And Reasons From Them In Accordance With The Dictates Of Sound Judgment. And Science Is Simply Common Sense At Its Best, That Is, Rigidly Accurate In Observation, And Merciless To Fallacy In Logic.

There Is But One Right, And The Possibilities Of Wrong Are Infinite.

Any One Who Has Studied The History Of Science Knows That Almost Every Great Step Therein Has Been Made By The "anticipation Of Nature," That Is, By The Invention Of Hypotheses, Which, Though Verifiable, Often Had Very Little Foundation To Start With; And, Not Unfrequently, In Spite Of A Long Career Of Usefulness, Turned Out To Be Wholly Erroneous In The Long Run.

The Only Medicine For Suffering, Crime, And All Other Woes Of Mankind, Is Wisdom. Teach A Man To Read And Write, And You Have Put Into His Hands The Great Keys Of The Wisdom Box. But It Is Quite Another Thing To Open The Box.

The Rung Of A Ladder Was Never Meant To Rest Upon.

I Took Thought, And Invented What I Conceived To Be The Appropriate Title Of 'agnostic'.

No Man Is Any The Worse Off Because Another Acquires Wealth By Trade, Or By The Exercise Of A Profession; On The Contrary, He Cannot Have Acquired His Wealth Except By Benefiting Others To The Extent Of What They Considered To Be Its Value.

Not Only Does Every Animal Live At The Expense Of Some Other Animal Or Plant, But The Very Plants Are At War.... The Individuals Of A Species Are Like The Crew Of A Foundered Ship, And None But Good Swimmers Have A Chance Of Reaching The Land.

Science Is Nothing But Trained And Organized Common Sense Differing From The Latter Only As A Veteran May Differ From A Raw Recruit: And Its Methods Differ From Those Of Common Sense Only As Far As The Guardsman's Cut And Thrust Differ From The Manner In Which A Savage Wields His Club.

Every Philosophical Thinker Hails It [the Origin Of Species] As A Veritable Whitworth Gun In The Armoury Of Liberalism.

The Only Freedom I Care About Is The Freedom To Do Right; The Freedom To Do Wrong I Am Ready To Part With On The Cheapest Terms To Anyone Who Will Take It Of Me

It Is Given To Few To Add The Store Of Knowledge, To Strike New Springs Of Thought, Or To Shape New Forms Of Beauty. But So Sure As It Is That Men Live Not By Bread, But By Ideas, So Sure Is It That The Future Of The World Lies In The Hands Of Those Who Are Able To Carry The Interpretation Of Nature A Step Further Than Their Predecessors.

To Quarrel With The Uncertainty That Besets Us In Intellectual Affairs Would Be About As Reasonable As To Object To Live One's Life With Due Thought For The Morrow Because No Man Can Be Sure He Will Alive An Hour Hence.

I Believe That History Might Be, And Ought To Be, Taught In A New Fashion So As To Make The Meaning Of It As A Process Of Evolution Intelligible To The Young.

Education Is The Instruction Of The Intellect In The Laws Of Nature.

It Is Better To Read A Little And Thoroughly Than Cram A Crude Undigested Mass Into My Head, Though It Be Great In Quantity.

The Sceptics End In The Infidelity Which Asserts The Problem To Be Insoluble, Or In The Atheism Which Denies The Existence Of Any Orderly Progress And Governance Of Things: The Men Of Genius Propound Solutions Which Grow Into Systems Of Theology Or Of Philosophy, Or Veiled In Musical Language Which Suggests More Than It Asserts, Take The Shape Of The Poetry Of An Epoch.

All Knowledge Is Good. It Is Impossible To Say Any Fragment Of Knowledge, However Insignificant Or Remote From One's Ordinary Pursuits, May Not Some Day Be Turned To Account.

Nothing Can Be More Incorrect Than The Assumption One Sometimes Meets With, That Physics Has One Method, Chemistry Another, And Biology A Third.

In Fact A Favourite Problem Of Tyndall Is-given The Molecular Forces In A Mutton Chop, Deduce Hamlet Or Faust Therefrom. He Is Confident That The Physics Of The Future Will Solve This Easily.

There Is Far Too Much Of The Feeding-bottle In Education And Young People Ought To Be Supplied With Good Intellectual Food And Then Left To Help Themselves.

The Mathematician Starts With A Few Propositions, The Proof Of Which Is So Obvious That They Are Called Self-evident, And The Rest Of His Work Consists Of Subtle Deductions From Them. The Teaching Of Languages, At Any Rate As Ordinarily Practiced, Is Of The Same General Nature Authority And Tradition Furnish The Data, And The Mental Operations Are Deductive.

All Truth, In The Long Run, Is Only Common Sense Clarified.

It Is Not To Be Forgotten That What We Call Rational Grounds For Our Beliefs Are Often Extremely Irrational Attempts To Justify Our Instincts.

I Have Never Been Able To Understand Why Pigeon-shooting At Hurlingham Should Be Refined And Polite, While A Rat-killing Match In Whitechapel Is Low.

The Thief And The Murderer Follow Nature Just As Much As The Philanthropist.

The Saying That A Little Knowledge Is A Dangerous Thing Is, To My Mind, A Very Dangerous Adage. If Knowledge Is Real And Genuine, I Do Not Believe That It Is Other Than A Very Valuable Posession, However Infinitesimal Its Quantity May Be. Indeed, If A Little Knowledge Is Dangerous, Where Is A Man Who Has So Much As To Be Out Of Danger?

Science And Literature Are Not Two Things, But Two Sides Of One Thing.

It Is Not What We Believe, But Why We Believe It. Moral Responsibility Lies In Diligently Weighing The Evidence. We Must Actively Doubt; We Have To Scrutinize Our Views, Not Take Them On Trust. No Virtue Attached To Blindly Accepting Orthodoxy, However 'venerable'.

If Then, Said I, The Question Is Put To Me Would I Rather Have A Miserable Ape For A Grandfather Or A Man Highly Endowed By Nature And Possessing Great Means And Influence And Yet Who Employs Those Faculties For The Mere Purpose Of Introducing Ridicule Into A Grave Scientific Discussion-i Unhesitatingly Affirm My Preference For The Ape.

Science Commits Suicide When It Adopts A Creed.

It Is Wrong For A Man To Say That He Is Certain Of The Objective Truth Of Any Proposition Unless He Can Produce Evidence Which Logically Justifies That Certainty.

Objective Truth

Time, Whose Tooth Gnaws Away Everything Else, Is Powerless Against Truth.

It Is An Error To Imagine That Evolution Signifies A Constant Tendency To Increased Perfection. That Process Undoubtedly Involves A Constant Remodeling Of The Organism In Adaptation To New Conditions; But It Depends On The Nature Of Those Conditions Whether The Direction Of The Modifications Effected Shall Be Upward Or Downward.

I Know Of No Department Of Natural Science More Likely To Reward A Man Who Goes Into It Thoroughly Than Anthropology. There Is An Immense Deal To Be Done In The Science Pure And Simple, And It Is One Of Those Branches Of Inquiry Which Brings One Into Contact With The Great Problems Of Humanity In Every Direction.

Surely There Is A Time To Submit To Guidance And A Time To Take One's Own Way At All Hazards.

The Very Existence Of Society Depends On The Fact That Every Member Of It Tacitly Admits He Is Not The Exclusive Possessor Of Himself, And That He Admits The Claim Of The Polity Of Which He Forms A Part, To Act, To Some Extent, As His Master.

No Mistake Is So Commonly Made By Clever People As That Of Assuming A Cause To Be Bad Because The Arguments Of Its Supporters Are, To A Great Extent, Nonsensical

I Am Not Afraid Of The Priests In The Long-run. Scientific Method Is The White Ant Which Will Slowly But Surely Destroy Their Fortifications. And The Importance Of Scientific Method In Modern Practical Life--always Growing And Increasing--is The Guarantee For The Gradual Emancipation Of The Ignorant Upper And Lower Classes, The Former Of Whom Especially Are The Strength Of The Priests.

Let Us Have "sweet Girl Graduates" By All Means. They Will Be None The Less Sweet For A Little Wisdom; And The "golden Hair" Will Not Curl Less Gracefully Outside The Head By Reason Of There Being Brains Within.

The Results Of Political Changes Are Hardly Ever Those Which Their Friends Hope Or Their Foes Fear.

Only A Scientific People Can Survive In A Scientific Future.

[scientists] Have Learned To Respect Nothing But Evidence, And To Believe That Their Highest Duty Lies In Submitting To It However It May Jar Against Their Inclinations.

Ecclesiasticism In Science Is Only Unfaithfulness To Truth

The Best Men Of The Best Epochs Are Simply Those Who Make The Fewest Blunders And Commit The Fewest Sins.

It Is Not Who Is Right, But What Is Right, That Is Of Importance.

Social Progress Means A Checking Of The Cosmic Process At Every Step And The Substitution For It Of Another, Which May Be Called The Ethical Process; The End Of Which Is Not The Survival Of Those Who May Happen To Be The Fittest, In Respect Of The Whole Of The Conditions Which Obtain, But Of Those Who Are Ethically The Best.

Material Advancement Has Its Share In Moral And Intellectual Progress. Becky Sharp's Acute Remark That It Is Not Difficult To Be Virtuous On Ten Thousand A Year Has Its Applications To Nations; And It Is Futile To Expect A Hungry And Squalid Population To Be Anything But Violent And Gross.

Unity Of Plan Everywhere Lies Hidden Under The Mask: Of Diversity Of Structure-the Complex Is Everywhere Evolved Out Of The Simple.

Man's Place In Nature.

It Sounds Paradoxical To Say The Attainment Of Scientific Truth Has Been Effected, To A Great Extent, By The Help Of Scientific Errors.

Surely It Must Be Plain That An Ingenious Man Could Speculate Without End On Both Sides, And Find Analogies For All His Dreams. Nor Does It Help Me To Tell Me That The Aspirations Of Mankind

The Known Is Finite, The Unknown Infinite; Intellectually We Stand On An Islet In The Midst Of An Illimitable Ocean Of Inexplicability. Our Business In Every Generation Is To Reclaim A Little More Land, To Add Something To The Extent And The Solidity Of Our Possessions.

Agnosticism, In Fact, Is Not A Creed, But A Method, The Essence Of Which Lies In The Rigorous Application Of A Single Principle. ... Positively The Principle May Be Expressed: In Matters Of The Intellect, Follow Your Reason As Far As It Will Take You, Without Regard To Any Other Consideration. And Negatively: In Matters Of The Intellect, Do Not Pretend That Conclusions Are Certain Which Are Not Demonstrated Or Demonstrable.

Teach A Child What Is Wise, That Is Morality. Teach Him What Is Wise And Beautiful, That Is Religion!

If There Is Anything In The World Which I Do Firmly Believe In, It Is The Universal Validity Of The Law Of Causation.

Science Seems To Me To Teach In The Highest And Strongest Manner The Great Truth Which Is Embodied In The Christian Conception Of Entire Surrender To The Will Of God. Sit Down Before Fact As A Little Child, Be Prepared To Give Up Every Preconceived Notion, Follow Humbly Wherever And To Whatever Abysses Nature Leads, Or You Shall Learn Nothing. I Have Only Begun To Learn Content And Peace Of Mind Since I Have Resolved At All Risks To Do This.

The Supernatural Is Being Swept Out Of The Universe In The Flood Of New Knowledge Of What Is Natural. It Will Soon Be As Impossible For An Intelligent, Educated Man Or Woman To Believe In A God As It Is Now To Believe That Earth Is Flat, That Flies Can Be Spontaneously Generated, That Disease Is A Divine Punishment, Or That Death Is Always Due To Witchcraft.

I Can Assure You That There Is The Greatest Practical Benefit In Making A Few Failures Early In Life. You Learn That Which Is Of Inestimable Importance That There Are A Great Many People In The World Who Are Just As Clever As You Are. You Learn To Put Your Trust, By And By, In An Economy And Frugality Of The Exercise Of Your Powers, Both Moral And Intellectual; And You Very Soon Find Out, If You Have Not Found It Out Before, That Patience And Tenacity Of Purpose Are Worth More Than Twice Their Weight Of Cleverness.

My Business Is To Teach My Aspirations To Confirm Themselves To Fact, Not To Try And Make Facts Harmonize With My Aspirations.

Skepticism Is The Highest Duty And Blind Faith The One Unpardonable Sin.

There Is Nothing Of Permanent Value (putting Aside A Few Human Affections) Nothing That Satisfies Quiet Reflection--except The Sense Of Having Worked According To One's Capacity And Light To Make Things Clear And Get Rid Of Cant And Shams Of All Sorts.

The Medieval University Looked Backwards; It Professed To Be A Storehouse Of Old Knowledge. The Modern University Looks Forward, And Is A Factory Of New Knowledge.

The Bible Has Been The Magna Charta Of The Poor And Of The Oppressed.

Next To Being Right In This World, The Best Of All Things Is To Be Clearly And Definitely Wrong, Because You Will Come Out Somewhere. If You Go Buzzing About Between Right And Wrong, Vibrating And Fluctuating, You Come Out Nowhere; But If You Are Absolutely And Thoroughly And Persistently Wrong, You Must, Some Of These Days, Have The Extreme Good Fortune Of Knocking Your Head Against A Fact, And That Sets You All Straight Again.

I Am Content With Nothing, Restless And Ambitious... And I Despise Myself For The Vanity, Which Formed Half The Stimulus To My Exertions. Oh Would That I Were One Of Those Plodding Wise Fools Who Having Once Set Their Hand To The Plough Go On Nothing Doubting.

Misery Is A Match That Never Goes Out.

I Have Always Been, Am, And Propose To Remain A Mere Scholar. All That I Have Ever Proposed To Myself Is To Say, This And This I Have Learned; Thus And Thus Have I Learned It; Go Thou And Learn Better; But Do Not Thrust On My Shoulders The Responsibility For Your Own Laziness If You Elect To Take, On My Authority, Conclusions The Value Of Which You Ought To Have Tested For Yourself.

Mix Salt And Sand, And It Shall Puzzle The Wisest Of Men, With His Mere Natural Appliances, To Separate All The Grains Of Sand From All The Grains Of Salt; But A Shower Of Rain Will Effect The Same Object In Ten Minutes.

There Is No Sadder Sight In The World Than To See A Beautiful Theory Killed By A Brutal Fact.

There Is No Alleviation For The Sufferings Of Mankind Except Veracity Of Thought And Of Action, And The Resolute Facing Of The World As It Is When The Garment Of Make-believe By Which Pious Hands Have Hidden Its Uglier Features Is Stripped Off.

No One Who Has Lived In The World As Long As You & I Have, Can Entertain The Pious Delusion That It Is Engineered Upon Principles Of Benevolence... The Cosmos Remains Always Beautiful And Profoundly Interesting In Every Corner-and If I Had As Many Lives As A Cat I Would Leave No Corner Unexplored.

Life Is Too Short To Occupy Oneself With The Slaying Of The Slain More Than Once.

Life Is Too Short

The Whole Analogy Of Natural Operations Furnishes So Complete And Crushing An Argument Against The Intervention Of Any But What Are Termed Secondary Causes, In The Production Of All The Phenomena Of The Universe; That, In View Of The Intimate Relations Between Man And The Rest Of The Living World; And Between The Forces Exerted By The Latter And All Other Forces, I Can See No Excuse For Doubting That All Are Co-ordinated Terms Of Nature's Great Progression, From The Formless To The Formed From The Inorganic To The Organic From Blind Force To Conscious Intellect And Will.

Science Has Fulfilled Her Function When She Has Ascertained And Enunciated Truth.

For These Two Years I Have Been Gravitating Towards Your Doctrines, And Since The Publication Of Your Primula Paper With Accelerated Velocity. By About This Time Next Year I Expect To Have Shot Past You, And To Find You Pitching Into Me For Being More Darwinian Than Yourself. However, You Have Set Me Going, And Must Just Take The Consequences, For I Warn You I Will Stop At No Point So Long As Clear Reasoning Will Take Me Further.

The Clergy Are At Present Divided Into Three Sections: An Immense Body Who Are Ignorant; A Small Proportion Who Know And Are Silent; And A Minute Minority Who Know And Speak According To Their Knowledge.

. . . I Fail To Find A Trace [in Protestantism] Of Any Desire To Set Reason Free. The Most That Can Be Discovered Is A Proposal To Change Masters. From Being A Slave Of The Papacy, The Intellect Was To Become The Serf Of The Bible.

Size Is Not Grandeur, And Territory Does Not Make A Nation.

A Good Man: Body Serves His Will And Enjoys Hard Work, Clear Intellect That Understands The Truths Of Nature, Full Of Passion For Life But Controlled By His Will, Well-developed Conscience, Loves Beauty In Art And Nature, Despises Inferior Morality, Respects Himself And Others.

Cherish [science], Venerate Her, Follow Her Methods Faithfully ... And The Future Of This People Will Be Greater Than The Past.

Elohim Was, In Logical Terminology, The Genus Of Which Ghosts, Chemosh, Dagon, Baal, And Jahveh Were Species. The Israelite Believed Jahveh To Be Immeasurably Superior To All Other Kinds Of Elohim. The Inscription On The Moabite Stone Shows That King Mesa Held Chemosh To Be, As Unquestionably, The Superior Of Jahveh.

I Am Too Much Of A Sceptic To Deny The Possibility Of Anything...

The Doctrine That All Men Are, In Any Sense, Or Have Been, At Any Time, Free And Equal, Is An Utterly Baseless Fiction.

No Delusion Is Greater Than The Notion That Method And Industry Can Make Up For Lack Of Mother-wit, Either In Science Or In Practical Life.

If A Little Knowledge Is Dangerous, Where Is The Man Who Has So Much As To Be Out Of Danger?

Missionaries, Whether Of Philosophy Or Religion, Rarely Make Rapid Way, Unless Their Preachings Fall In With The Prepossessions Ofthe Multitude Of Shallow Thinkers, Or Can Be Made To Serve As A Stalking-horse For The Promotion Of The Practical Aims Of The Still Larger Multitude, Who Do Not Profess To Think Much, But Are Quite Certain They Want A Great Deal.

Our Reverence For The Nobility Of Manhood Will Not Be Lessened By The Knowledge That Man Is In Substance And In Structure, One With The Brutes; For He Alone Possesses The Marvellous Endowment Of Intelligible And Rational Speech Whereby He Has Slowly Accumulated And Organized The Experience Which Is Almost Wholly Lost With The Cessation Of Individual Life In Other Animals; So That He Now Stands Raised Above It As On A Mountain-top, Far Above The Level Of His Humble Fellows, And Transfigured From His Grosser Nature By Reflecting, Here And There, A Ray From The Infinite Source Of Truth.

Rome Is The One Great Spiritual Organisation Which Is Able To Resist And Must, As A Matter Of Life And Death, The Progress Of Science And Modern Civilization

Books Are The Money Of Literature, But Only The Counters Of Science.

What Are The Moral Convictions Most Fondly Held By Barbarous And Semi-barbarous People? They Are The Convictions That Authority Is The Soundest Basis Of Belief; That Merit Attaches To Readiness To Believe; That The Doubting Disposition Is A Bad One, And Skepticism Is A Sin.

Try To Learn Something About Everything And Everything About Something.

My Experience Of The World Is That Things Left To Themselves Don't Get Right.

Perhaps The Most Valuable Result Of All Education Is The Ability To Make Yourself Do The Thing You Have To Do, When It Ought To Be Done, Whether You Like It Or Not. It Is The First Lesson That Ought To Be Learned And However Early A Man's Training Begins, It Is Probably The Last Lesson That He Learns Thoroughly.

The Only Question Which Any Wise Man Can Ask Himself, And Which Any Honest Man Will Ask Himself, Is Whether A Doctrine Is True Or False.

The Only People, Scientific Or Other, Who Never Make Mistakes Are Those Who Do Nothing.

Making Mistakes

I Wish You Would Let An Old Man, Who Has Had His Share Of Fighting, Remind You That Battles, Like Hypotheses, Are Not To Be Multiplied Beyond Necessity.

Teach A Man To Read And Write, And You Have Put Into His Hands The Great Keys Of The Wisdom-box.

The Great Tragedy Of Science - The Slaying Of A Beautiful Hypothesis By An Ugly Fact.

Living Things Have No Inertia, And Tend To No Equilibrium.

The Ultimate Court Of Appeal Is Observation And Experiment... Not Authority.

The Man Of Science Has Learned To Believe In Justification, Not By Faith, But By Verification.

And You Very Soon Find Out, If You Have Not Found It Out Before, That Patience And Tenacity Of Purpose Are Worth More Than Twice Their Weight Of Cleverness.

A Man Has No Reason To Be Ashamed Of Having An Ape For His Grandfather. If There Were An Ancestor Whom I Should Feel Shame In Recalling It Would Rather Be A Man Who Plunges Into Scientific Questions With Which He Has No Real Acquaintance, Only To Obscure Them By An Aimless Rhetoric.

Agnosticism Is Not Properly Described As A "negative" Creed, Nor Indeed As A Creed Of Any Kind, Except In So Far As It Expresses Absolute Faith In The Validity Of A Principle Which Is As Much Ethical As Intellectual.

Of All The Senseless Babble I Have Ever Had Occasion To Read, The Demonstrations Of These Philosophers Who Undertake To Tell Us All About The Nature Of God Would Be The Worst, If They Were Not Surpassed By The Still Greater Absurdities Of The Philosophers Who Try To Prove That There Is No God.

The Doctrine Of Transmigration Was A Means Of Constructing A Plausible Vindication Of The Ways Of The Cosmos To Man; None But Very Hasty Thinkers Will Reject It On The Grounds Of Inherent Absurdity.

History Warns Us That It Is The Customary Fate Of New Truths To Begin As Heresies And To End As Superstitions.

Some Experience Of Popular Lecturing Had Convinced Me That The Necessity Of Making Things Plain To Uninstructed People, Was One Of The Very Best Means Of Clearing Up The Obscure Corners In One's Own Mind.

What Men Of Science Want Is Only A Fair Day's Wages For More Than A Fair Day's Work.

Life Is Like Walking Along A Crowded Street--there Always Seem To Be Fewer Obstacles To Getting Along On The Opposite Pavement--and Yet, If One Crosses Over, Matters Are Rarely Mended.

Natural Knowledge, Seeking To Satisfy Natural Wants, Has Found The Ideas Which Can Alone Still Spiritual Cravings. I Say That Natural Knowledge, In Desiring To Ascertain The Laws Of Comfort, Has Been Driven To Discover Those Of Conduct, And To Lay The Foundations Of A New Morality.

Within The Last Fifty Years, The Extraordinary Growth Of Every Department Of Physical Science Has Spread Among Us Mental Food Of So Nutritious And Stimulating A Character That A New Ecdysis Seems Imminent.

The Most Considerable Difference I Note Among Men Is Not In Their Readiness To Fall Into Error, But In Their Readiness To Acknowledge These Inevitable Lapses.

There Are Savages Without God In Any Proper Sense Of The Word, But None Without Ghosts.

The Bible Account Of The Creation Of Eve Is A Preposterous Fable.

True Science And True Religion Are Twin Sisters, And The Separation Of Either From The Other Is Sure To Prove The Death Of Both. Science Prospers Exactly In Proportion As It Is Religious; And Religion Flourishes In Exact Proportion To The Scientific Depth And Firmness Of Its Basis.

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