The scientific spirit is of more value than its products, and irrationally held truths may be more harmful than reasoned errors.
What we call rational grounds for our beliefs are often extremely irrational attempts to justify our instincts.
I am too much of a skeptic to deny the possibility of anything.
The man of science has learned to believe in justification, not by faith, but by verification.
For once reality and his brains came into contact and the result was fatal.
Try to learn something about everything and everything about something.
In fact a favourite problem of [John 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.
To a clear eye the smallest fact is a window through which the infinite may be seen.
History warns us … that it is the customary fate of new truths to begin as heresies and to end as superstitions.
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.
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.
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?
Let us understand, once for all, that the ethical progress of society depends, not on imitating the cosmic process, still less in running away from it, but in combating it.
Of moral purpose I see no trace in Nature. That is an article of exclusively human manufacture and very much to our credit.
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.
Act decidedly and take the consequences. No good is ever done by hesitation.
The great end of life is not knowledge but action.
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.