Perhaps the most valuable result of all education is the ability to make yourself do the thing you have to do, when it ought to be done, whether you like it or not it is the first lesson that ought to be learned and however early a man's training begins, it is probably the last lesson that he learns thoroughly.
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The chess board is the world, the pieces are the phenomena of the universe, the rules of the game are what we call the laws of Nature. The player on the other side is hidden from us. We know that his play is always fair, just, and patient. But we also know, to our cost, that he never overlooks a mistake, or makes the smallest allowance for ignorance.
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Thoughtfulness for others, generosity, modesty, and self-respect are the qualities which make a real gentleman or lady.
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Science ... warns me to be careful how I adopt a view which jumps with my preconceptions, and to require stronger evidence for such belief than for one to which I was previously hostile. My business is to teach my aspirations to conform themselves to fact, not to try and make facts harmonize with my aspirations.
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It is an error to imagine that evolution signifies a constant tendency to increased perfection. That process undoubtedly involves a constant remodelling of the organism in adaptation to new conditions but it depends on the nature of those conditions whether the directions of the modifications effected shall be upward or downward.
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We live in a world which is full of misery and ignorance, and the plain duty of each and all of us is to try to make the little corner he can influence somewhat less miserable and somewhat less ignorant than it was before he entered it.
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Sit down before fact like a little child, and be prepared to give up every preconceived notion. Follow humbly wherever and to whatever abyss Nature leads, or you shall learn nothing.
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Irrationally held truths may be more harmful than reasoned errors.
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Science is nothing but trained and organized common sense, differing from the latter only as a veteran may differ from a raw recruit and its methods differ from those of common sense only as far as the guardsman's cut and thrust differ from the manner in which a savage wields his club.
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The great tragedy of science -- the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact.
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The great tragedy of Science: the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact
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I am too much of a skeptic to deny the possibility of anything.
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Science is nothing but trained and organized common sense.
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