The object of universities is not to make skillful lawyers, physicians or engineers. It is to make capable and cultivated human beings

Complete liberty of contradicting and disproving our opinion, is the very condition which justifies us in assuming its truth for purposes of action.

Lord, enlighten thou our enemies. Sharpen their wits, give acuteness to their perceptions, and consecutiveness and clearness to their reasoning powers: we are in danger from their folly, not from their wisdom; their weakness is what fills us with apprehension, not their strength.

He who cannot by his labor suffice for his own support has no claim to the privilege of helping himself to the money of others. By becoming dependent on the remaining members of the community for actual subsistence, he abdicates his claim to equal rights for them I other respects.

It is only in the backward countries of the world that increased production is still an important object.

It is questionable if all the mechanical inventions yet made have lightened the day's toil of any human being.

The beliefs which we have most warrant for have no safeguard to rest on but a standing invitation to the whole world to prove them unfounded. If the challenge is not accepted, or is accepted and the attempt fails, we are far enough from certainty still; but we have done the best that the existing state of human reason admits of; we have neglected nothing that could give the truth a chance of reaching us.