Quotes

i. “You can no more make someone tell the truth than you can force someone to love you.” (Philip Roth, Portnoy’s Complaint)

ii. “Every generation laughs at the old fashions, but follows religiously the new.” (Henry David Thoreau, Walden)

iii. “Nature is our kindest friend and best critic in experimental science if we only allow her intimations to fall unbiased on our minds.” (Michael Faraday)

iv. “If you stroke a cat, it will purr; and, as inevitably, if you praise a man, a sweet expression of delight will appear on his face; and even though the praise is a palpable lie, it will be welcome, if the matter is one on which he prides himself.” (Schopenhauer)

v. “Nature answers only when she is questioned.” (Friedrich Gustav Jakob Henle)

vi. “Tyranny and despotism can be exercised by many, more rigorously, more vigorously, and more severely, than by one.” (Andrew Johnson)

vii. “It is hardly in human nature that a man should quite accurately gauge the limits of his own insight; but it is the duty of those who profit by his work to consider carefully where he may have been carried beyond it.” (William Kingdon Clifford, The Ethics of Belief)

viii. “Between two evils, choose neither; between two goods, choose both.” (Tryon Edwards, A Dictionary of Thoughts)

ix. “Any act often repeated soon forms a habit: and habit allowed, steadily gains in strength. — At first it may be but as the spider’s web, easily broken through, but if not resisted it soon binds us with chains of steel.” (-ll-)

x. “The prejudiced and obstinate man does not so much hold opinions, as his opinions hold him.” (-ll-)

xi. “We should be as careful of the books we read, as of the company we keep. The dead very often have more power than the living.” (-ll-)

xii. “Right actions for the future are the best apologies for wrong ones in the past – the best evidence of regret for them that we can offer, or the world receive.” (-ll-)

xiii. “It remains a lesson to all time, that goodness, though the indispensable adjunct to knowledge, is no substitute for it; that when conscience undertakes to dictate beyond its province, the result is only the more monstrous.” (James Anthony Froude)

xiv. “I ask no one who may read this book to accept my views. I ask him to think for himself.” (Henry George, Social Problems)

xv. “The bitterest tears shed over graves are for words left unsaid and deeds left undone.” (Harriet Beecher Stowe)

xvi. “The greater the interest involved in a truth the more careful, self-distrustful, and patient should be the inquiry.” (-ll-)

xvii. “To a person uninstructed in natural history, his country or sea-side stroll is a walk through a gallery filled with wonderful works of art, nine-tenths of which have their faces turned to the wall.” (Thomas Henry Huxley)

xviii. “I can assure you that there is the greatest practical benefit in making a few failures early in life. You learn that which is of inestimable importance — that there are a great many people in the world who are just as clever as you are.” (-ll-)

xix. “Whoever is not in the possession of leisure can hardly be said to possess independence.” (Herman Melville)

xx. “Truth does not need to borrow garments from falsehood.” (José Rizal)