9 quotes
To my mind there are no advantages and many disadvantages in lectures compared with reading.
Autobiography (1958)
Science consists in grouping facts so that general laws or conclusions may be drawn from them.
Autobiography (1958)
The time is always ripe for the re-interpretation of theories in the light of new vision and of new facts. This is the very province of science.
Autobiography (1958)
Though the theory is worthless without the well-observed facts, the facts are useless without the frame of the theory to receive them.
Autobiography (1958)
I hope that I may die before my mind fails to a sensible extent.
Autobiography (1958)
This leads me to remark that I have almost always been treated honestly by my reviewers, passing over those without scientific knowledge as not worthy of notice.
Autobiography (1958)
I discovered, though unconsciously and insensibly, that the pleasure of observing and reasoning was a much higher one than that of skill and sport. The primeval instincts of the barbarian slowly yielded to the acquired tastes of the civilized man.
Autobiography (1958)
But I had gradually come, by this time, to see that the Old Testament from its manifestly false history of the world, with the Tower of Babel, the rainbow as a sign, etc., etc., and from its attributing to God the feelings of a revengeful tyrant, was no more to be trusted than the sacred books of the Hindoos, or the beliefs of any barbarian.
Autobiography (1958)
Some of my critics have said, "Oh, he is a good observer, but has no power of reasoning." I do not think that this can be true, for the Origin of Species is one long argument from the beginning to the end, and it has convinced not a few able men. No one could have written it without having some power of reasoning.
Autobiography (1958)