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.

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

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

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

Natural Selection never made it come to pass, as a habit of nature, that an unsupported stone should move downwards rather than upwards. It applies to no part of inorganic nature, and is very limited even in the phenomena of organic life.

And we owe science to the combined energies of individual men of genius, rather than to any tendency to progress inherent in civilization.

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