Every rustic who delivers in the village alehouse his slow, infrequent sentences, may help to kill or keep alive the fatal superstitions which clog his race.

There is one thing in the world more wicked than the desire to command, and that is the will to obey.

The aim of scientific thought, then, is to apply past experience to new circumstances; the instrument is an observed uniformity in the course of events. By the use of this instrument it gives us information transcending our experience, it enables us to infer things that we have not seen from things that we have seen; and the evidence for the truth of that information depends on our supposing that the uniformity holds good beyond our experience.

If a belief is not realized immediately in open deeds, it is stored up for the guidance of the future.

The scientific discovery appears first as the hypothesis of an analogy; and science tends to become independent of the hypothesis.

A little reflection will show us that every belief, even the simplest and most fundamental, goes beyond experience when regarded as a guide to our actions.

Thought is powerless, except it make something outside of itself: the thought which conquers the world is not contemplative but active.