 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. |
| 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. |
| The only question which any wise man can ask himself, and which any honest man will ask himself, is whether a doctrine is true or false. |
| The ultimate court of appeal is observation and experiment... not authority. |
| The only medicine for suffering, crime, and all other woes of mankind, is wisdom. Teach a man to read and write, and you have put into his hands the great keys of the wisdom box. But it is quite another thing to open the box. |
| The rung of a ladder was never meant to rest upon, but only to hold a man's foot long enough to enable him to put the other somewhat higher. |
| Science is simply common sense at its best, that is, rigidly accurate in observation, and merciless to fallacy in logic. |
| My experience of the world is that things left to themselves don't get right. |
| 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. |
| 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. |
| 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. |
| 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. |
| Every great advance in natural knowledge has involved the absolute rejection of authority. |
| There is but one right, and the possibilities of wrong are infinite. |
