I could trust a fact and always cross-question an assertion.

A centre of excellence is, by definition, a place where second class people may perform first class work.

You will be astonished when I tell you what this curious play of carbon amounts to. A candle will burn some four, five, six, or seven hours. What, then, must be the daily amount of carbon going up into the air in the way of carbonic acid! ... Then what becomes of it? Wonderful is it to find that the change produced by respiration ... is the very life and support of plants and vegetables that grow upon the surface of the earth.

There is no more open door by which you can enter into the study of natural philosophy than by considering the physical phenomena of a candle

If the term education may be understood in so large a sense as to include all that belongs to the improvement of the mind, either by the acquisition of the knowledge of others or by increase of it through its own exertions, we learn by them what is the kind of education science offers to man. It teaches us to be neglectful of nothing - not to despise the small beginnings, for they precede of necessity all great things in the knowledge of science, either pure or applied.

I have far more confidence in the one man who works mentally and bodily at a matter than in the six who merely talk about it.

There’s nothing quite as frightening as someone who knows they are right.