Matter and force are the two names of the one artist who fashions the living as well as the lifeless.

I have never had the least sympathy with the a priori reasons against orthodoxy, and I have by nature and disposition the greatest possible antipathy to all the atheistic and infidel school. Nevertheless I know that I am, in spite of myself, exactly what the Christian would call, and, so far as I can see, is justified in calling, atheist and infidel.

People never will recollect that mere learning and mere cleverness are of next to no value in life, while energy and intellectual grip, the things that are inborn and cannot be taught, are everything.

Every philosophical thinker hails it [The Origin of Species] as a veritable Whitworth gun in the armoury of liberalism.

The only question which any wise man can ask himself, and which any honest man will ask himself, is whether a doctrine is true or false.

Logical consequences are the scarecrows of fools and the beacons of wise men.

It ought not to be unpleasant to say that which one honestly believes or disbelieves. That it so constantly is painful to do so, is quite enough obstacle to the progress of mankind in that most valuable of all qualities, honesty of word or of deed.