Quote collection
294 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"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."
"Ecclesiasticism in science is only unfaithfulness to truth"
"Genius, as an explosive power, beats gunpowder hollow."
"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."
"My business is to teach my aspirations to confirm themselves to fact, not to try and make facts harmonize with my aspirations."
"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."
"Surely there is a time to submit to guidance and a time to take one's own way at all hazards."
"Logical consequences are the scarecrows of fools and the beacons of wise men."
"If there is anything in the world which I do firmly believe in, it is the universal validity of the law of causation."
"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."
"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?"
"'Infidel' is a term of reproach, which Christians and Mohammedans, in their modesty, agree to apply to those who differ from them."
"The improver of natural knowledge absolutely refuses to acknowledge authority, as such. For him, skepticism is the highest of duties; blind faith the one unpardonable sin."
"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."
"The great end of life is not knowledge but action."
"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."
"A world of facts lies outside and beyond the world of words."
"The science, the art, the jurisprudence, the chief political and social theories, of the modern world have grown out of Greece and Rome-not by favour of, but in the teeth of, the fundamental teachings of early Christianity, to which science, art, and any serious occupation with the things of this world were alike despicable."
"Mathematics may be compared to a mill of exquisite workmanship, which grinds your stuff to any degree of fineness."
"Mathematics may be compared to a mill of exquisite workmanship, which grinds you stuff of any degree of fineness; but, nevertheless, what you get out depends upon what you put in; and as the grandest mill in the world will not extract wheat-flour from peascods, so pages of formulae will not get a definite result out of loose data."