If the hypothesis of evolution is true, living matter must have arisen from non-living matter; for by the hypothesis the condition of the globe was at one time such, that living matter could not have existed in it, life being entirely incompatible with the gaseous state.

There is but one right, and the possibilities of wrong are infinite.

For these two years I have been gravitating towards your doctrines, and since the publication of your primula paper with accelerated velocity. By about this time next year I expect to have shot past you, and to find you pitching into me for being more Darwinian than yourself. However, you have set me going, and must just take the consequences, for I warn you I will stop at no point so long as clear reasoning will take me further.

Misery is a match that never goes out.

Ecclesiasticism in science is only unfaithfulness to truth

The Bible has been the Magna Charta of the poor and of the oppressed.

If individuality has no play, society does not advance; if individuality breaks out of all bounds, society perishes.