"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"
"Irrationally held truths may be more harmful than reasoned errors"
"In scientific work, those who refuse to go beyond fact rarely get as far as fact"
"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"
"If a man cannot do brain work without stimulants of any kind, he had better turn to hand work it is an indication on Nature's part that she did not mean him to be a head worker"
"If a little knowledge is dangerous, where is the man who has so much as to be out of danger?"
"I took thought, and invented what I conceived to be the appropriate title of 'agnostic'"
"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"
"I protest that if some great Power would agree to make me always think what is true and do what is right, on condition of being turned into a sort of clock and would up every morning before I got out of bed, I should instantly close with the offer"
"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"
"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"
"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"
"History warns us that it is the customary fate of new truths to begin as heresies and to end as superstitions"
"Freedom and order are not incompatible... truth is strength... free discussion is the very life of truth"
"Every great advance in natural knowledge has involved the absolute rejection of authority"
