We receive the truths of science by compulsion. Nothing but ignorance is able to resist them.

If they are, then the only ultimate truths are the particulars of concrete experience, and no postulate or general assumption is inherent in science until its proceedings become systematic, or the truths already reached give direction to further research.

The questions of philosophy proper are human desires and fears and aspirations - human emotions - taking an intellectual form.

The pains of disconcerted or frustrated habits, and the inherent pleasure there is in following them, are motives which nature has put into our wills without generally caring to inform us why; and she sometimes decrees, indeed, that her reasons shall not be ours.

What a fearful object a long-neglected duty gets to be

Let one persuade many, and he becomes confirmed and convinced, and cares for no better evidence.

All observers not laboring under hallucinations of the senses are agreed, or can be made to agree, about facts of sensible experience, through evidence toward which the intellect is merely passive, and over which the individual will and character have no control.