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David Brewster Quotes
1781–1868 Scotland
Sir David Brewster FRS (December 11, 1781 – February 10, 1868) was a Scottish physicist, inventor and writer, and one of the founders of the British Association for the Advancement of Science. He was particularly remarkable for his contributions to the field of optics.
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Progression has not been the character of the history of man.
Man, made after God's image, was a nobler creation than twinkling sparks in the sky, or than the larger and more useful lamp of the moon.
All the attributes of God, except omnipotence, are inferences. His omnipresence, His omniscience, His justice, mercy, and truth, are the deductions of reason, and however true and demonstrable, they exercise little influence over the mind
The mouse, even, has not been transmuted into the cat, nor the hen into the turkey, nor the duck into the goose, nor the hawk into the eagle, and still less the monkey into the man.
The facts and fancies of Mr. Darwin (1862)
It is a more rational belief that man may become a brute than that a brute may become a man; and it is an easier faith that plants and animals may dwindle down into an elemental atom, than that this atom should embrace in its organization, and evolve, all the noble forms of vegetable, animal, and intellectual life.
The facts and fancies of Mr. Darwin (1862)
Truth has no greater enemy than its unwise defenders, and no warmer friends than those who, receiving it in a meek and tolerant spirit, respect the conscientious convictions of others, and seek, in study and in prayer, for the best solution of mysterious and incomprehensible revelations.
It is not easy to devise a cure for such a state of things (the declining taste for science). The most obvious remedy is to provide the educated classes with a series of works on popular and practical science, freed from mathematical symbols and technical terms, written in simple and perspicuous language, and illustrated by facts and experiments which are level to the capacity of ordinary minds.
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