Now, if the cooperation of some thousands of millions of cells in our brain can produce our consciousness, a true singularity, the idea becomes vastly more plausible that the cooperation of humanity, or some sections of it, may determine what Comte calls a Great Being.

If human beings could be propagated by cutting, like apple trees, aristocracy would be biologically sound.

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.

I have no doubt that in reality the future will be vastly more surprising than anything I can imagine. Now my own suspicion is that the Universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose.

The idea of protoplasm, which was really a name for our ignorance, [is] only a little less misleading than the expression "Vital force".

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

There can be no truce between science and religion.