The dogma of the infallibility of the Bible is no more self-evident than is that of the infallibility of the popes.

Freedom and order are not incompatible... truth is strength... free discussion is the very life of truth.

Trust a witness in all matters in which neither his self-interest, his passions, his prejudices, nor the love of the marvellous is strongly concerned. When they are involved, require corroborative evidence in exact proportion to the contravention of probability by the thing testified.

The foundation of all morality is to have done, once and for all, with lying; to give up pretending to believe that for which there is no evidence, and repeating unintelligible propositions about things beyond the possibilities of knowledge.

Misery is a match that never goes out.

Though under-instruction is a bad thing, it is not impossible that over-instruction may be worse.

Within the last fifty years, the extraordinary growth of every department of physical science has spread among us mental food of so nutritious and stimulating a character that a new ecdysis seems imminent.