The course of human history is determined, not by what happens in the skies, but what takes place in our hearts.
Evolution is unproved and unprovable. We believe it only because the only alternative is special creation, and that is unthinkable.
My personal conviction is that science is concerned wholly with truth, not with ethics.
Civilization never stands still; if in one country it is falling back, in another it is changing, evolving, becoming more complicated, bringing fresh experience to body and mind, breeding new desires, and exploiting Nature’s cupboard for their satisfaction.
The discovery of agriculture was the first big step toward a civilized life.
Tribal life comes automatically to an end when a primitive people begins to live in a town or a city, for sooner or later a tribal organization is found to be incompatible with life in a city.
As long as man remains an inquiring animal, there can never be a complete unanimity in our fundamental beliefs. The more diverse our paths, the greater is likely to be the divergence of beliefs.
Whichever theory we adopt to give a rational explanation of human existence, that theory must take into account and explain the mental nature we see at work in all modern communities.
Christianity has not conquered nationalism; the opposite has been the case nationalism has made Christianity its footstool.
A drunkard is one thing, and a temperate man is quite another.
Civilization, we shall find, like Universalism and Christianity, is anti evolutionary in its effects; it works against the laws and conditions which regulated the earlier stages of man’s ascent.
I am a rank individualist.
I prize the conditions under which I have lived because they have permitted me to choose my opportunities, to inquire into such matters as interested me, and to publish what I believed to be true, uncontrolled by any central authority.
In a tribal organization, even in time of peace, service to tribe or state predominates over all self seeking; in war, service for the tribe or state becomes supreme, and personal liberty is suspended.
Man is by nature competitive, combative, ambitious, jealous, envious, and vengeful.