In Europe I have been accused of taking my scientific ideas from the Church. In America I have been called a heretic, because I will not let my church-going friends pat me on the head.

When chemists have brought their knowledge out of their special laboratories into the laboratory of the world, where chemical combinations are and have been through all time going on in such vast proportions,-when physicists study the laws of moisture, of clouds and storms, in past periods as well as in the present,-when, in short, geologists and zoologists are chemists and physicists, and vice versa,-then we shall learn more of the changes the world has undergone than is possible now that they are separately studied.

You cannot do without one specialty. You must have some base-line to measure the work and attainments of others. For a general view of the subject, study the history of the sciences. Broad knowledge of all Nature has been the possession of no naturalist except Humboldt, and general relations constituted his specialty.

A laboratory of natural history is a sanctuary where nothing profane should be tolerated. I feel less agony at improprieties in churches than in a scientific laboratory.

Study nature not books

The resources of the Deity cannot be so meagre, that, in order to create a human being endowed with reason, he must change a monkey into a man.

The time has come when scientific truth must cease to be the property of the few, when it must be woven into the common life of the world.