The way it is now, the asylums can hold the sane people, but if we tried to shut up the insane we should run out of building materials.

Evolution is a blind giant who rolls a snowball down a hill. The ball is made of flakes-circumstances. They contribute to the mass without knowing it. They adhere without intention, and without foreseeing what is to result. When they see the result they marvel at the monster ball and wonder how the contriving of it came to be originally thought out and planned. Whereas there was no such planning, there was only a law: the ball once started, all the circumstances that happened to lie in its path would help to build it, in spite of themselves.

Human beings seem to be a poor invention. If they are the noblest works of God where is the ignoblest?

You may have noticed that the less I know about a subject the more confidence I have, and the more new light I throw on it.

It takes a thousand men to invent a telegraph, or a steam engine, or a phonograph, or a photograph, or a telephone or any other important thing-and the last man gets the credit and we forget the others. He added his little mite - that is all he did. These object lessons should teach us that ninety-nine parts of all things that proceed from the intellect are plagiarisms, pure and simple; and the lesson ought to make us modest. But nothing can do that.

Good judgement is the result of experience and experience the result of bad judgement.

And what is a man without energy? Nothing - nothing at all.