Teach him to think for himself? Oh, my God, teach him rather to think like other people!

My father was not scientific, and I was left to struggle with a child's blindness, added to a student's thirst for knowledge.

I am not a person of opinions because I feel the counter arguments too strongly.

Teach him to think for himself? Oh, my God, teach him rather to think like other people!

It was very different when the masters of science sought immortality and power; such views, although futile, were grand: but now the scene was changed. The ambition of the inquirer seemed to limit itself to the annihilation of those visions on which my interest in science was chiefly founded. I was required to exchange chimeras of boundless grandeur for realities of little worth.

Till society is very differently constituted, parents, I fear, will still insist on being obeyed because they will be obeyed, and constantly endeavor to settle that power on a divine right which will not bear the investigation of reason.

But I am a blasted tree; the bolt has entered my soul; and I felt then that I should survive to exhibit what I shall soon cease to be - a miserable spectacle of wrecked humanity, pitiable to others and intolerable to myself.