The more rapidly truth is spread among mankind the better it will be for them. Only let us be sure that it is the truth.

All knowledge is good. It is impossible to say any fragment of knowledge, however insignificant or remote from one's ordinary pursuits, may not some day be turned to account.

. . . I fail to find a trace [in Protestantism] of any desire to set reason free. The most that can be discovered is a proposal to change masters. From being a slave of the papacy, the intellect was to become the serf of the Bible.

Economy does not lie in sparing money, but in spending it wisely.

It seems safe to look forward to the time when the conception of attractive and repulsive forces, having served its purpose as a useful piece of scientific scaffolding, will be replaced by the deduction of the phenomena known as attraction and repulsion, from the general laws of motion.

Any one who has studied the history of science knows that almost every great step therein has been made by the "anticipation of Nature," that is, by the invention of hypotheses, which, though verifiable, often had very little foundation to start with; and, not unfrequently, in spite of a long career of usefulness, turned out to be wholly erroneous in the long run.

I am too much of a sceptic to deny the possibility of anything...