Science doesn't purvey absolute truth. Science is a mechanism. It's a way of trying to improve your knowledge of nature. It's a system for testing your thoughts against the universe and seeing whether they match. And this works, not just for the ordinary aspects of science, but for all of life. I should think people would want to know that what they know is truly what the universe is like, or at least as close as they can get to it.

I perfectly agree with your Lordship too, that to crush the Industry of so great and so fine a province of the empire, in order to favour the monopoly of some particular towns in Scotland or England, is equally unjust and impolitic. The general opulence and improvement of Ireland might certainly, under proper management, afford much greater resources to the Government, than can ever be drawn from a few mercantile or manufacturing towns.

None can be free who is a slave to, and ruled by, his passions.

Needless to say, I am not opposed to woman suffrage on the conventional ground that she is not equal to it. I see neither physical, psychological, nor mental reasons why woman should not have the equal right to vote with man. But that can not possibly blind me to the absurd notion that woman will accomplish that wherein man has failed. If she would not make things worse, she certainly could not make them better. To assume, therefore, that she would succeed in purifying something which is not susceptible of purification, is to credit her with supernatural powers. Since woman's greatest misfortune has been that she was looked upon as either angel or devil, her true salvation lies in being placed on earth; namely, in being considered human, and therefore subject to all human follies and mistakes. Are we, then, to believe that two errors will make a right? Are we to assume that the poison already inherent in politics will be decreased, if women were to enter the political arena?

Upon the progress of knowledge the whole progress of the human race is immediately dependent: he who retards that, hinders this also. And he who hinders this, -what character does he assume towards his age and posterity? Louder than with a thousand voices, by his actions he proclaims into the deafened ear of the world present and to come -"As long as I live at least, the men around me shall not become wiser or better; - for in their progress I too, notwithstanding all my efforts to the contrary, should be dragged forward in some direction; and this I detest I will not become more enlightened, - I will not become nobler. Darkness and perversion are my elements, and I will summon all my powers together that I may not be dislodged from them."

There were honest people long before there were Christians and there are, God be praised, still honest people where there are no Christians. It could therefore easily be possible that people are Christians because true Christianity corresponds to what they would have been even if Christianity did not exist.

It is a matter of perfect indifference where a thing originated; the only question is: "Is it true in and for itself?" Many think that by pronouncing a doctrine to be Neo-Platonic, they have ipso facto banished it from Christianity. Whether a Christian doctrine stands exactly thus or thus in the Bible, the point to which the exegetical scholars of modern times devote all their attention is not the only question. The Letter kills, the Spirit makes alive: this they say themselves, yet pervert the sentiment by taking the Understanding for the Spirit.

That which makes the man no worse than he was makes his life no worse: it has no power to harm, without or within.

Jacques said that his master said that everything good or evil we encounter here below was written on high.

In the hours without sleep, each moment is so full and so vacant that it suggests itself as a rival of Time.

There is more of good nature than of good sense at the bottom of most marriages.

I care little about the sword: I will allow a thing to struggle for itself in this world, with any sword or tongue or implement it has, or can lay hold of. We will let it preach, and pamphleteer, and fight, and to the uttermost bestir itself, and do, beak and claws, whatsoever is in it; very sure that it will, in the long-run, conquer nothing which does not deserve to be conquered. What is better than itself, it cannot put away, but only what is worse. In this great Duel, Nature herself is umpire, and can do no wrong: the thing which is deepest-rooted in Nature, what we call truest, that thing and not the other will be found growing at last.

Only the dead have seen the end of war.

When the oak-tree is felled, the whole forest echoes with it; but a hundred acorns are planted silently by some unnoticed breeze.

History, I believe, furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government. This marks the lowest grade of ignorance of which their civil as well as religious leaders will always avail themselves for their own purposes.

Scientific theories are distinguished from myths... in being criticizable, and... open to modifications... They can be neither verified nor probabilified.

When the happiness or misery of others depends in any respect upon our conduct, we dare not, as self-love might suggest to us, prefer the interest of one to that of many. The man within immediately calls to us, that we value ourselves too much and other people too little, and that, by doing so, we render ourselves the proper object of the contempt and indignation of our brethren. Neither is this sentiment confined to men of extraordinary magnanimity and virtue. It is deeply impressed upon every tolerably good soldier, who feels that he would become the scorn of his companions, if he could be supposed capable of shrinking from danger, or of hesitating, either to expose or to throw away his life, when the good of the service required it.

The exclusive right of legislation and taxation in the representatives of the people.

"Detect quacks"? Yes do, for Heaven's sake; but know withal the men that are to be trusted! Till we know that, what is all our knowledge; how shall we even so much as "detect"? For the vulpine sharpness, which considers itself to be knowledge, and "detects" in that fashion, is far mistaken. Dupes indeed are many: but, of all dupes, there is none so fatally situated as he who lives in undue terror of being duped.

Falsehood has a perennial spring.

Tentative efforts lead to tentative outcomes. Therefore, give yourself fully to your endeavors. Decide to construct your character through excellent actions, and determine to pay the price for a worthy goal. The trials you encounter will introduce you to your strengths. Remain steadfast... and one day you will build something that endures, something worthy of your potential.

The world is not dialectical -- it is sworn to extremes, not to equilibrium, sworn to radical antagonism, not to reconciliation or synthesis. This is also the principle of evil.

The ancient Romans built their greatest masterpieces of architecture for wild beasts to fight in.

If you believe what you like in the gospels, and reject what you don't like, it is not the gospel you believe, but yourself.

Incredible that the prospect of having a biographer has made no one renounce having a life.

With a foolish man make no dispute.

The transition from philosophy to the domain of state and society had been an intrinsic part of Hegel's system.

At this point we find ourselves confronted by a very disquieting question: Do we really wish to act upon our knowledge?

I am enraptured by Hindu philosophy, whose essential endeavor is to surmount the self; and everything I do, everything I think is only myself and the selfs humiliations.

And we cannot change this order of things; but what we can do is to acquire stout hearts, worthy of good men, thereby courageously enduring chance and placing ourselves in harmony with Nature.

Once conform, once do what others do because they do it, and a kind of lethargy steals over all the finer senses of the soul.

All the great speakers were bad speakers at first.

On the stage on which we are observing it, - Universal History - Spirit displays itself in its most concrete reality.

Space, subjectively, is the coexistence of perceptions - perceiving two objects at once.

So long as we love we serve; so long as we are loved by others, I would almost say that we are indispensable; and no man is useless while he has a friend.

Outside intelligences, exploring the Solar System with true impartiality, would be quite likely to enter the Sun in their records thus: Star X, spectral class G0, 4 planets plus debris.

Such night in England ne'er had been, nor ne'er again shall be.

But when they have realized that it [society] rejects them forever, they themselves assume the ostracism of which they are victims so as not to leave the initiative to their oppressors.

All those to whom I looked up, were of opinion that the pleasure of sympathy with human beings, and the feelings which made the good of others, and especially of mankind on a large scale, the object of existence, were the greatest and surest sources of happiness. Of the truth of this I was convinced, but to know that a feeling would make me happy if I had it, did not give me the feeling.

Thee will find out in time that I have a great love of professing vile sentiments, I don't know why, unless it springs from long efforts to avoid priggery.

The way in which a society organizes the life of its members ... is one "project" of realization among others. But once the project has become operative in the basic institutions and relations, it tends to become exclusive and to determine the development of the society as a whole.

All-powerful god, who am I but the fear that I inspire in others?

A little folly is desirable in him that will not be guilty of stupidity.

The sham cause in physical influence consists in rashly assuming that the commerce of substance and transitive forces is sufficiently knowable from their mere existence. Hence it is not so much a system as rather the neglect of all philosophical system as a superfluity in the argument. Freeing the concept from this defect, we shall have a species of commerce alone deserving to be called real, and from which the whole constituting the world merits being called real, and not ideal or imaginary.

Two things fill the mind with ever-increasing wonder and awe, the more often and the more intensely the mind of thought is drawn to them: the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me.

Mechanical Science depends on the Conception of Force; and is divided into 'Statics', the doctrine of Force preventing motion, and 'Dynamics', the doctrine of Force producing motion.

It is the destiny of our race to become united into one great body, thoroughly connected in all its parts, and possessed of similar culture. Nature, and even the passions and vices of Man, have from the beginning tended towards this end. A great part of the way towards it is already passed, and we may surely calculate that it will in time be reached.

The hearing ear is always found close to the speaking tongue.

"I never believed in God before." - that I understand. But not: "I never really believed in Him before."

Psychoanalysis will be entirely discredited one of these days, no doubt about it. Which will not keep it from destroying our last vestiges of naivete. After psychoanalysis, we can never again be innocent.