If you leave the smallest corner of your head vacant for a moment, other people's opinions will rush in from all quarters.

Both optimists and pessimists contribute to society. The optimist invents the aeroplane, the pessimist the parachute.

Most people do not pray; they only beg.

Englishmen never will be slaves; they are free to do whatever the government and public opinion allow them.

What is wrong with priests and popes is that instead of being apostles and saints, they are nothing but empirics who say I know instead of I am learning, and pray for credulity and inertia as wise men pray for skepticism and activity.

Faith in reason as a prime motor is no longer the criterion of the sound mind, any more than faith in the Bible is the criterion of righteous intention.

The most sublime courage I have ever witnessed has been among that class too poor to know they possessed it, and too humble for the world to discover it.