25 quotes
If indeed there were a judgment-day, it would be for man to appear at the bar not as a criminal but as accuser.
The Martyrdom of Man (1872)
Doubt is the offspring of knowledge: the savage never doubts at all.
The Martyrdom of Man (1872)
A day will come when the European god of the nineteenth century will be classed with the gods of Olympus and the Nile.
The Martyrdom of Man (1872)
The philosophic spirit of inquiry may be traced to brute curiosity, and that to the habit of examining all things in search of food. Artistic genius is an expansion of monkey imitativeness.
The Martyrdom of Man (1872)
What a state of society is this in which free-thinker is a term of abuse, and in which doubt is regarded as sin?
The Martyrdom of Man (1872)
The one, the outstanding, dramatic, imaginative, historical picture of life, to be inspired by Victorian science.
V. S. Pritchett in The New Statesman and Nation vol. 25 (1943)
The first rational exposition of the relations of mankind to the mystery which shrouds the how and wherefore of man’s existence.
Sir Harry Johnston Liberia (1906)
As a single atom man is an enigma: as a whole he is a mathematical problem. As an individual he is a free agent, as a species the offspring of necessity.
The Martyrdom of Man (1872)
Our enlightened posterity will look back upon us who eat oxen and sheep, just as we look upon cannibals.
The Martyrdom of Man (1872)
Open the book of universal history at what period we may, it is always the India trade which is the cause of internal industry and foreign negotiation.
The Martyrdom of Man (1872)
It may safely be asserted that the art of war will soon be reduced to a simple question of expenditure and credit, and that the largest purse will be the strongest arm.
The Martyrdom of Man (1872)
It is a sure criterion of the civilisation of ancient Egypt that the soldiers did not carry arms except on duty, and that the private citizens did not carry them at all.
The Martyrdom of Man (1872)
The Supreme Power is not a Mind; not a Force; not a Being, but something higher than a Being; something for which we have no words, something for which we have no ideas.
The Martyrdom of Man (1872)
If we look into ourselves we discover propensities which declare that our intellects have arisen from a lower form; could our minds be made visible we should find them tailed.
The Martyrdom of Man (1872)
One book that has influenced the writer very strongly is Winwood Reade's Martyrdom of Man…It is still an extraordinarily inspiring presentation of human history as one consistent process.
H. G. Wells The Outline of History (1920)
All men indeed cannot be poets, inventors or philanthropists; but all men can join in that gigantic and godlike work, the progress of creation. Whoever improves his own nature improves the universe of which he is a part.
The Martyrdom of Man (1872)
A religion so cheerless, a philosophy so sorrowful, could never have succeeded with the masses of mankind if presented only as a system of metaphysics. Buddhism owed its success to its catholic spirit and its beautiful morality.
The Martyrdom of Man (1872)
As for the system of the Commune, which makes it impossible for a man to rise or fall, it is merely the old caste system revived; if it could be put into force, all industry would be disheartened, emulation would cease, and mankind would go to sleep.
The Martyrdom of Man (1872)
And then, the Earth being small, mankind will migrate into space, and will cross the airless Saharas which separate planet from planet and sun from sun. The Earth will become a Holy Land which will be visited by pilgrims from all the quarters of the Universe. Finally, men will master the forces of Nature; they will become themselves architects of systems, manufacturers of worlds.
The Martyrdom of Man (1872)
Reade was an emancipating writer because he seemed to speak as man to man to resolve history into an intelligible pattern in which there was no need for miracles. Even if he was wrong, he was grown-up.