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

[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.

The world shall perish not for lack of wonders, but for lack of wonder

Quantitative work shows clearly that natural selection is a reality, and that, among other things, it selects Mendelian genes, which are known to be distributed at random through wild populations, and to follow the laws of chance in their distribution to offspring. In other words, they are an agency producing variation of the kind which Darwin postulated as the raw material on which selection acts.

I think, however, that so long as our present economic and national systems continue, scientific research has little to fear.

We must learn not to take traditional morals too seriously. And it is just because even the least dogmatic of religions tends to associate itself with some kind of unalterable moral tradition, that there can be no truce between science and religion.

The extreme socialists desire to run every nation as a single business concern.