Quote collection
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"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."
"The only good that I can see in the demonstration of the truth of "Spiritualism" is to furnish an additional argument against suicide. Better live a crossing-sweeper than die and be made to talk twaddle by a "medium" hired at a guinea a séance."
"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."
"Of moral purpose I see no trace in Nature. That is an article of exclusively human manufacture and very much to our credit."
"We are prone to see what lies behind our eyes, rather than what apprears before them."
"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."
"What men of science want is only a fair day's wages for more than a fair day's work."
"If individuality has no play, society does not advance; if individuality breaks out of all bounds, society perishes."
"That mysterious independent variable of political calculation, Public Opinion."
"My experience of the world is that things left to themselves don't get right."
"Learn what is true in order to do what is right."
"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 would rather be the offspring of two apes than be a man and afraid to face the truth."
"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."
"Matter and force are the two names of the one artist who fashions the living as well as the lifeless."
"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?"
"A well-worn adage advises those who set out upon a great enterprise to count the cost, yet some of the greatest enterprises have succeeded because the people who undertook them did not count the cost."
"I have no faith, very little hope, and as much charity as I can afford."
"Do what you can to do what you ought, and leave hoping and fearing alone."
"For myself I say deliberately, it is better to have a millstone tied round the neck and be thrown into the sea than to share the enterprises of those to whom the world has turned, and will turn, because they minister to its weaknesses and cover up the awful realities which it shudders to look at."