Nothing is more destructive of individual character than for a man to lose all faith in his own abilities for the prosecution of his work.

Upon the progress of knowledge the whole progress of the human race is immediately dependent: he who retards that, hinders this also.

The person who doubts there is an external world does not need proof: he needs a cure.

Education should aim at destroying free will so that after pupils are thus schooled they will be incapable throughout the rest of their lives of thinking or acting otherwise than as their school masters would have wished

I am satisfied with, and stand firm as a rock on the belief that all that happens in God's world is for the best, but what is merely germ, what blossom and what fruit I do not know.

All death in nature is birth, and at the moment of death appears visibly the rising of life. There is no dying principle in nature, for nature throughout is unmixed life, which, concealed behind the old, begins again and develops itself. Death as well as birth is simply in itself, in order to present itself ever more brightly and more like to itself.

My mind can take no hold on the present world, nor rest in it a moment, but my whole nature rushes onward with irresistible force towards a future and better state of being.