I notice that young men go to the universities in order to become doctors or philosophers or anything, so long as it is a title, and that many go in for those professions who are utterly unfit for them, while others who would be very competent are prevented by business or their daily cares, which keep them away from letters.

We cannot teach people anything; we can only help them discover it within themselves.

Facts which at first seem improbable will, even on scant explanation, drop the cloak which has hidden them and stand forth in naked and simple beauty.

If I were again beginning my studies, I would follow the advice of Plato and start with mathematics.

The Bible shows the way to go to heaven, not the way the heavens go.

I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use.

By denying scientific principles, one may maintain any paradox.

It vexes me when they would constrain science by the authority of the Scriptures, and yet do not consider themselves bound to answer reason and experiment.

In questions of science, the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual.

I give infinite thanks to God, who has been pleased to make me the first observer of marvelous things.

The sun, with all those planets revolving around it and dependent on it, can still ripen a bunch of grapes as if it had nothing else in the universe to do.

The nature of the human mind is such that unless it is stimulated by images of things acting upon it from without, all remembrance of them passes easily away.

All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered; the point is to discover them.

I have never met a man so ignorant that I couldn't learn something from him.