The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Quotations (229 page)
Read The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Quotations Online
Authors: Elizabeth Knowles
1825–95
Most of my colleagues [in the Metaphysical Society] were
-ists
of one sort or another; and, however kind and friendly they might be, I, the man without a rag of a label to cover himself with, could not fail to have some of the uneasy feelings which must have beset the historical fox when, after leaving the trap in which his tail remained, he presented himself to his normally elongated companions. So I took thought, and invented what I conceived to be the appropriate title of "agnostic".
Collected Essays
(1893–4) "Agnosticism"
The great tragedy of Science—the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact.
Collected Essays
(1893–4) "Biogenesis and Abiogenesis"
If a little knowledge is dangerous, where is the man who has so much as to be out of danger?
Collected Essays
vol. 3 (1895) "On Elementary Instruction in Physiology" (written 1877)
It is the customary fate of new truths to begin as heresies and to end as superstitions.
Science and Culture and Other Essays
(1881) "The Coming of Age of the Origin of Species"
Irrationally held truths may be more harmful than reasoned errors.
Science and Culture and Other Essays
(1881) "The Coming of Age of the Origin of Species"
Logical consequences are the scarecrows of fools and the beacons of wise men.
Science and Culture and Other Essays
(1881) "On the Hypothesis that Animals are Automata"
A man has no reason to be ashamed of having an ape for his grandfather. If there were an ancestor whom I should feel shame in recalling it would rather be a
man—
a man of restless and versatile intellect—who, not content with an equivocal success in his own sphere of activity, plunges into scientific questions with which he has no real acquaintance, only to obscure them by an aimless rhetoric, and distract the attention of his hearers from the real point at issue by eloquent digressions and skilled appeals to religious prejudice.
replying to Bishop Samuel Wilberforce in the debate on Darwin's theory of evolution; see
meeting of the British Association in Oxford, 30 June 1860
I am too much of a sceptic to deny the possibility of anything.
letter to Herbert Spencer, 22 March 1886
1956–
If you gave him a good script, actors and technicians, Mickey Mouse could direct a movie.
in an interview,
Daily Telegraph
24 February 1994
("
La Pasionaria
") 1895–1989
It is better to die on your feet than to live on your knees.
also attributed to Emiliano Zapata
speech in Paris, 3 September 1936
No pasarán.They shall not pass.
radio broadcast, Madrid, 19 July 1936
1828–1906
The majority never has right on its side.
An Enemy of the People
(1882) act 4.
You should never have your best trousers on when you go out to fight for freedom and truth.
An Enemy of the People
(1882) act 5
Mother, give me the sun.
Ghosts
(1881) act 3
But good God, people don't do such things!
Hedda Gabler
(1890) act 4
Castles in the air—they are so easy to take refuge in. And easy to build, too.
The Master Builder
(1892) act 3
On the contrary.
last words, after a nurse had said that he "seemed to be a little better"
Michael Meyer
Ibsen
(1967)
