When the land is cultivated entirely by the spade and no horses are kept, a cow is kept for every three acres of land.

Whatever crushes individuality is despotism, by whatever name it may be called and whether it professes to be enforcing the will of God or the injunctions of men.

It is better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a pig satisfied.

The application of algebra to geometry ... has immortalized the name of Descartes, and constitutes the greatest single step ever made in the progress of the exact sciences.

Co-operation, like other difficult things, can be learned only by practice: and to be capable of it in great things, a people must be gradually trained to it in small. Now the whole course of advancing civilization is a series of such training.

The test of real and vigorous thinking, the thinking which ascertains truths instead of dreaming dreams, is successful application to practice.

On religion in particular the time appears to me to have come when it is the duty of all who, being qualified in point of knowledge, have on mature consideration satisfied themselves that the current opinions are not only false but hurtful, to make their dissent known.