Most people can bear adversity. But if you wish to know what a man really is, give him power.

The first step is for man to cease to be the slave of man. The second, is to cease to be the slave of the monsters of his own creation, the ghosts and phantoms of the air.

Shakespeare was an intellectual ocean, whose waves touched all the shores of thought; within which were all the tides and waves of destiny and will; over which swept all the storms of fate, ambition and revenge; upon which fell the gloom and darkness of despair and death and all the sunlight of content and love, and within which was the inverted sky lit with the eternal stars -- an intellectual ocean -- toward which all rivers ran, and from which now the isles and continents of thought receive their dew and rain.

The first duty of man is to support himself - to see to it that he does not become a burden. His next duty is to help others if he has a surplus, and if he really believes they deserve to be helped.

The intellectual advancement of man depends on how often he can exchange an old superstition for a new truth.

In the search for truth - that everything in nature seems to hide - man needs the assistance of all his faculties. All the senses should be awake.

Give me the storm and tempest of thought and action, rather than the dead calm of ignorance and faith! Banish me from Eden when you will; but first let me eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge!