It sounds paradoxical to say the attainment of scientific truth has been effected, to a great extent, by the help of scientific errors.

My fundamental axiom of speculative philosophy is that materialism and spiritualism are opposite poles of the same absurdity-the absurdity of imagining that we know anything about either spirit or matter.

Life is too short to occupy oneself with the slaying of the slain more than once.

Every living creature commences its existence under a form different from, and simpler than, that which it eventually attains.

Agnosticism is not properly described as a "negative" creed, nor indeed as a creed of any kind, except in so far as it expresses absolute faith in the validity of a principle which is as much ethical as intellectual.

The results of political changes are hardly ever those which their friends hope or their foes fear.

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