In scientific work, those who refuse to go beyond fact rarely get as far as fact.
Friendship involves many things but, above all the power of going outside oneself and appreciating what is noble and loving in another.
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.
Thoughtfulness for others, generosity, modesty, and self-respect are the qualities which make a real gentleman or lady.
Science is organized common sense where many a beautiful theory was killed by an ugly fact.
Economy does not lie in sparing money, but in spending it wisely.
Teach a child what is wise, that is morality. Teach him what is wise and beautiful, that is religion!
Mathematics may be compared to a mill of exquisite workmanship, which grinds your stuff to any degree of fineness.
God give me strength to face a fact though it slay me.
Every great advance in natural knowledge has involved the absolute rejection of authority.
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 rung of a ladder was never meant to rest upon, but only to hold a man’s foot long enough to enable him to put the other somewhat higher.
History warns us that it is the customary fate of new truths to begin as heresies and to end as superstitions.
For every man the world is as fresh as it was at the first day, and as full of untold novelties for him who has the eyes to see them.
Books are the money of Literature, but only the counters of Science.
All truth, in the long run, is only common sense clarified.
The man of science has learned to believe in justification, not by faith, but by verification.
The question of all questions for humanity, the problem which lies behind all others and is more interesting than any of them, is that of the determination of man’s place in nature and his relation to the cosmos.
If a little knowledge is dangerous, where is the man who has so much as to be out of danger?
Science has fulfilled her function when she has ascertained and enunciated truth.