Above all things expand the frontiers of science: without this the rest counts for nothing.

I forget most of what I read, just as I do most of what I have eaten, but I know that both contribute no less to the conservation of my mind and my body on that account.

The pleasures of the imagination are as it were only drawings and models which are played with by poor people who cannot afford the real thing.

A book is a mirror: if an ape looks into it an apostle is hardly likely to look out.

The more experiences and experiments accumulate in the exploration of nature, the more precarious the theories become. But it is not always good to discard them immediately on this account. For every hypothesis which once was sound was useful for thinking of previous phenomena in the proper interrelations and for keeping them in context. We ought to set down contradictory experiences separately, until enough have accumulated to make building a new structure worthwhile.

Before we blame we should first see whether we cannot excuse.

Actual aristocracy cannot be abolished by any law: all the law can do is decree how it is to be imparted and who is to acquire it.