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.
Science is simply common sense at its best, that is, rigidly accurate in observation, and merciless to fallacy in logic.
The best men of the best epochs are simply those who make the fewest blunders and commit the fewest sins.
My business is to teach my aspirations to confirm themselves to fact, not to try and make facts harmonize with my aspirations.
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.
My experience of the world is that things left to themselves don't get right.
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.
The man of science has learned to believe in justification, not by faith, but by verification.
The results of political changes are hardly ever those which their friends hope or their foes fear.
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.
Freedom and order are not incompatible... truth is strength... free discussion is the very life of truth.
No slavery can be abolished without a double emancipation, and the master will benefit by freedom more than the freed-man.
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.
Every great advance in natural knowledge has involved the absolute rejection of authority.
The great tragedy of science - the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact.
The great thing in the world is not so much to seek happiness as to earn peace and self-respect.
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.
The great thing in the world is not so much to seek happiness as to earn peace and self-respect.
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.
History warns us that it is the customary fate of new truths to begin as heresies and to end as superstitions.
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.
The results of political changes are hardly ever those which their friends hope or their foes fear.
The scientific imagination always restrains itself within the limits of probability.
Every great advance in natural knowledge has involved the absolute rejection of authority.
If a little knowledge is dangerous, where is the man who has so much as to be out of danger?
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.
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.
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.