A fairly bright boy is far more intelligent and far better company than the average adult.

[Children] are taught that it is a virtue to accept statements without adequate evidence, which leaves them a prey to quacks of every kind in later life, and makes it very difficult for them to accept the methods of thought which are successful in science.

Capitalism, though it may not always give the scientific worker a living wage, will always protect him, as being one of the geese which produce golden eggs for its table.

It was a reaction from the old idea of "protoplasm", a name which was a mere repository of ignorance.

The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions. These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.

Shelley and Keats were the last English poets who were at all up to date in their chemical knowledge.

There are 400,000 species of beetles on this planet, but only 8,000 species of mammals.