Every great advance in natural knowledge has involved the absolute rejection of authority.
From Thomas Huxley
The only medicine for suffering, crime, and all other woes of mankind, is wisdom. Teach a man to read and write, and you have put into his hands the great keys of the wisdom box. But it is quite another thing to open the box.
The improver of natural knowledge absolutely refuses to acknowledge authority, as such. For him, skepticism is the highest of duties; blind faith the one unpardonable sin.
The most considerable difference I note among men is not in their readiness to fall into error, but in their readiness to acknowledge these inevitable lapses.
Make up your mind to act decidedly and take the consequences. No good is ever done in this world by hesitation.
The results of political changes are hardly ever those which their friends hope or their foes fear.
Logical consequences are the scarecrows of fools and the beacons of wise men.
I am content with nothing, restless and ambitious... and I despise myself for the vanity, which formed half the stimulus to my exertions. Oh would that I were one of those plodding wise fools who having once set their hand to the plough go on nothing doubting.
I protest that if some great Power would agree to make me always think what is true and do what is right, on condition of being turned into a sort of clock and would up every morning before I got out of bed, I should instantly close with the offer.
Science is nothing, but trained and organized common sense.
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