Life is a school of probability.

A Parliament is nothing less than a big meeting of more or less idle people.

No real English gentleman, in his secret soul, was ever sorry for the death of a political economist.

Nine tenths of modern science is in this respect the same: it is the produce of men whom their contemporaries thought dreamers - who were laughed at for caring for what did not concern them - who, as the proverb went, 'walked into a well from looking at the stars' - who were believed to be useless, if anyone could be such.

The maxim of science is simply that of common sense-simple cases first; begin with seeing how the main force acts when there is as little as possible to impede it, and when you thoroughly comprehend that, add to it in succession the separate effects of each of the incumbering and interfering agencies.

It is often said that men are ruled by their imaginations; but it would be truer to say they are governed by the weakness of their imaginations.

Persecution in intellectual countries produces a superficial conformity, but also underneath an intense, incessant, implacable doubt.