Gems of Wisdom
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Gems of Wisdom Abraham Lincoln Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed is more important than any one thing. And in the end, it's not the years in your life that count. It's the life in your years. Both read the same Bible, and pray to the same God; and each invokes his aid against the other.... The prayers of both could not be answered--that of neither has been answered fully. Character is like a tree and reputation like its shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing. Discourage litigation. Persuade your neighbors to compromise whenever you can. As a peacemaker the lawyer has superior opportunity of being a good man. There will still be business enough. Don't pray that God's on our side, pray that we're on his side. Force is all-conquering, but its victories are short-lived. He can compress the most words into the smallest ideas of any man I ever met. I am a firm believer in the people. If given the truth, they can be depended upon to meet any national crises. The great point is to bring them the real facts. I don't know who my grandfather was; I'm much more concerned to know what his grandson will be. I have always found that mercy bears richer fruits than strict justice. I will prepare and some day my chance will come. If I only had an hour to chop down a tree, I would spend the first 45 minutes sharpening my axe. It has been my experience that folks who have no vices have very few virtues. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It often requires more courage to dare to do right than to fear to do wrong. Most folks are about as happy as they make up their minds to be. Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power. No man has a good enough memory to make a successful liar. No man is good enough to govern another man without that other's consent. Tact is the ability to describe others as they see themselves. The ballot is stronger than the bullet. The best thing about the future is that it comes one day at a time. The probability that we may fail in the struggle ought not to deter us from the support of a cause we believe to be just. The worst thing you can do for those you love is the things they could and should do themselves. Things may come to those who wait, but only the things left by those who hustle. Those who would deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves; and, under a just God, cannot long retain it. To sin by silence when they should protest makes cowards of men. Truth is generally the best vindication against slander. When you have got an elephant by the hind leg, and he is trying to run away, it's best to let him run. Whenever I hear anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally. You cannot escape the responsibility of tomorrow by evading it today. You may deceive all the people part of the time, and part of the people all the time, but not all the people all the time. Aesop Beware lest you lose the substance by grasping at the shadow. In critical moments even the very powerful have need of the weakest. It is easy to be brave from a safe distance. No act of kindness, no matter how small, is ever wasted. The shaft of the arrow had been feathered with one of the eagle's own plumes. We often give our enemies the means of our own destruction. We hang the petty thieves and appoint the great ones to public office. Albert Camus Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower. But what is happiness except the simple harmony between a man and the life he leads. Do not wait for the last judgment. It takes place every day. Don't walk in front of me, I may not follow. Don't walk behind me, I may not lead. Walk beside me and be my friend. I see many people die because they judge that life is not worth living. I see others paradoxically getting killed for the ideas or illusions that give them a reason for living (what is called a reason for living is also an excellent reason for dying). I therefore conclude that the meaning of life is the most urgent of questions. If, after all, men cannot always make history have meaning, they can always act so that their own lives have one. If there is a sin against life, it consists perhaps not so much in despairing of life as in hoping for another life and in eluding the implacable grandeur of this life. In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer. Nobody realizes that some people expend tremendous energy merely to be normal. Too many have dispensed with generosity in order to practice charity. What is a rebel? A man who says no. Albert Einstein A human being is part of a whole, called by us the Universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separated from the rest--a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circles of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty. A man's ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death. All of us who are concerned for peace and triumph of reason and justice must be keenly aware how small an influence reason and honest good will exert upon events in the political field. Do not worry about your difficulties in Mathematics. I can assure you mine are still greater. Every kind of peaceful cooperation among men is primarily based on mutual trust and only secondarily on institutions such as courts of justice and police. Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not one bit simpler. Everything that is really great and inspiring is created by the individual who can labor in freedom. God reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists. Great spirits have always found violent opposition from mediocrities. The latter cannot understand it when a man does not thoughtlessly submit to hereditary prejudices but honestly and courageously uses his intelligence. He who cherishes the values of culture cannot fail to be a pacifist. I have deep faith that the principle of the universe will be beautiful and simple. I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones. If my theory of relativity proves to be correct, Germany will claim me a German, and France will claim me a citizen of the world. However, if it proves wrong, France will say I’m a German, and Germany will say that I’m a Jew. If there is any religion that could cope with modern scientific needs, it would be Buddhism. If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it? In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity. It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance you must keep moving. My sense of God is my sense of wonder about the Universe. Never underestimate your own ignorance. Nothing will benefit human health and increase the chances for survival of life on Earth as much as the evolution to a vegetarian diet. Once you can accept the universe as matter expanding into nothing that is something, wearing stripes with plaid comes easy. One of the strongest motives that lead men to art and science is escape from everyday life with its painful crudity and hopeless dreariness, from the fetters of one's own ever-shifting desires. A finely tempered nature longs to escape from the personal life into the world of objective perception and thought. One should guard against preaching to young people success in the customary form as the main aim in life. The most important motive for work in school and in life is pleasure in work, pleasure in its result, and the knowledge of the value of the result to the community. Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former. The further the spiritual evolution of mankind advances, the more certain it seems to me that the path to genuine religiosity does not lie through the fear of life, and the fear of death, and blind faith, but through striving after rational knowledge. The grand aim of all science is to cover the greatest number of empirical facts by logical deduction from the smallest number of hypotheses or axioms. The ideals which have always shone before me and filled me with the joy of living are goodness, beauty, and truth. To make a goal of comfort or happiness has never appealed to me; a system of ethics built on this basis would be sufficient only for a herd of cattle. The important thing is not to stop questioning. The individual must not merely wait and criticize, he must defend the cause the best he can. The fate of the world will be such as the world deserves. The release of atomic energy has not created a new problem. It has merely made more urgent the necessity of solving an existing one. The significant problems we have cannot be solved at the same level of thinking with which we created them. The unleashed power of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking and we thus drift toward unparalleled catastrophe. The whole of science is nothing more than a refinement of everyday thinking. There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is. True art is characterized by an irresistible urge in the creative artist Try not to become a man of success but rather to become a man of value. When all think alike, no one thinks very much. When you look at yourself from a universal standpoint, something inside always reminds or informs you that there are bigger and better things to worry about. Albert Schweitzer A great secret of success is to go through life as a man who never gets used up. A man does not have to be an angel in order to be a saint. An optimist is a person who sees a green light everywhere, while a pessimist sees only the red stoplight. . . The truly wise person is colorblind. Constant kindness can accomplish much. As the sun makes ice melt, kindness causes misunderstanding, mistrust and hostility to evaporate. Example is not the main thing in influencing others. It is the only thing. Grow into your ideals so that life cannot rob you of them. Happiness is nothing more than good health and a bad memory. I don't know what your destiny will be, but one thing I do know: the only ones among you who will be really happy are those who have sought and found how to serve. In everyone's life, at some time, our inner fire goes out. It then bursts into flame by an encounter with another human being. We should all be thankful for those people who rekindle the inner spirit. Man is a clever animal who behaves like an imbecile. The spirit of the age is filled with the disdain for thinking. The tragedy of life is not that we die, but is rather, what dies inside a man while he lives. There are (to me) two means of refuge from the miseries of life: music and cats. Therefore search and see if there is not some place where you may invest your humanity. Truth has not special time of its own. Its hour is now -- always. Until he extends his circle of compassion to include all living things, man will not himself find peace. You must give some time to your fellow men. Even if it's a little thing, do something for others - something for which you get no pay but the privilege of doing it. Alexander Humboldt I am more and more convinced that our happiness or unhappiness depends more on the way we meet the events of life than on the nature of those events themselves. Alexandre Dumas If God were suddenly condemned to live the life which He has inflicted upon men, He would kill Himself. Jealousy is the art of injuring ourselves more than others. There is neither happiness nor unhappiness in this world; there is only the comparison of one state with another. Only a man who has felt ultimate despair is capable of feeling ultimate bliss. It is necessary to have wished for death in order to know how good life is to live. Until the day when God shall deign to reveal the future to man, all human wisdom is summed up in these two words,--'Wait and hope'. Anaxagoras The descent to Hades is the same from every place. Anne Frank How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world. Think of all the beauty still left around you and be happy. Aristotle A likely impossibility is always preferable to an unconvincing possibility. Even when laws have been written down, they ought not always to remain unaltered. It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it. It is the nature of desire not to be satisfied, and most men live only for the gratification of it. I count him braver who overcomes his desires than him who overcomes his enemies. It is possible to fail in many ways...while to succeed is possible only in one way. Nature does nothing uselessly. Arthur Conan Doyle ...chief proof of man's real greatness lies in his perception of his own smallness. I never guess. It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts. Mediocrity knows nothing higher than itself, but talent instantly recognizes genius. Arthur Shopenhauer All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident. Compassion is the basis of all morality. Every nation ridicules other nations, and all are right. Every person takes the limits of their own field of vision for the limits of the world. Honor has not to be won; it must only not be lost. If you want to know your true opinion of someone, watch the effect produced in you by the first sight of a letter from him. Talent hits a target no one else can hit; Genius hits a target no one else can see. The closing years of life are like the end of a masquerade party when the masks are dropped. We forfeit three-fourths of ourselves in order to be like other people. Aung San Suu Kyi The only real prison is fear, and the only real freedom is freedom from fear. Ayn Rand A good novel is an indivisible sum; every scene, sequence and passage of a good novel has to involve, contribute to and advance all three of its major attributes: theme, plot, characterization. A private individual may do anything except that which is legally forbidden; A government individual may do nothing except that which is legally permitted. A viler evil than to murder a man, is to sell him suicide as an act of virtue. A viler evil than to throw a man into a sacrificial furnace, is to demand that he leap in, of his own will, and that he build the furnace, besides. Civilization is the progress toward a society of privacy. The savage's whole existence is public, ruled by the laws of his tribe. Civilization is the process of setting man free from men. Guilt is a rope that wears thin. Happiness is that state of consciousness which proceeds from the achievement of one's values. I can accept anthing, except what seems to be the easiest for most people: the half-way, the almost, the just-about, the in-between. I swear by my life and my love of it that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine. Independence is the recognition of the fact that yours is the responsibility of judgment and nothing can help you escape it. It is not advisable, James, to venture unsolicited opinions. You should spare yourself the embarrassing discovery of their exact value to your listener.  (Atlas Shrugged) Love is our response to our highest values. Love is self-enjoyment. The noblest love is born out of admiration of another’s values. Men have been taught that it is a virtue to agree with others. But the creator is the man who disagrees. Men have been taught that it is a virtue to swim with the current. But the creator is the man who goes against the current. Men have been taught that it is a virtue to stand together. But the creator is the man who stands alone. My philosophy, in essence, is the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute. The alleged short-cut to knowledge, which is faith, is only a short-circuit destroying the mind. The Argument from Intimidation is a confession of intellectual impotence. The evil of the world is made possible by nothing but the sanction you give it. The secrets of this earth are not for all men to see, but only for those who seek them. The spread of evil is the symptom of a vacuum. whenever evil wins, it is only by default: by the moral failure of those who evade the fact that there can be no compromise on basic principles. Whatever their future, at the dawn of their lives, men seek a noble vision of man's nature and of life's potential Bertrand Russell A stupid man's report of what a clever man says can never be accurate, because he unconsciously translates what he hears into something he can understand. All movements go too far. Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric. Everything is vague to a degree you do not realize till you have tried to make it precise. I think we ought always to entertain our opinions with some measure of doubt. I shouldn't wish people dogmatically to believe any philosophy, not even mine. I would never die for my beliefs because I might be wrong. In all affairs it's a healthy thing now and then to hang a question mark on the things you have long taken for granted. In the part of this universe that we know there is great injustice, and often the good suffer, and often the wicked prosper, and one hardly knows which of those is the more annoying. It is a waste of energy to be angry with a man who behaves badly, just as it is to be angry with a car that won't go. Life is nothing but a competition to be the criminal rather than the victim. Men fear thought as they fear nothing else on earth -- more than ruin -- more even than death.... Thought is subversive and revolutionary, destructive and terrible, thought is merciless to privilege, established institutions, and comfortable habit. Thought looks into the pit of hell and is not afraid. Thought is great and swift and free, the light of the world, and the chief glory of man. Our great democracies still tend to think that a stupid man is more likely to be honest than a clever man. Passive acceptance of the teacher's wisdom is easy to most boys and girls. It involves no effort of independent thought, and seems rational because the teacher knows more than his pupils; it is moreover the way to win the favour of the teacher unless he is a very exceptional man. Yet the habit of passive acceptance is a disastrous one in later life. It causes man to seek and to accept a leader, and to accept as a leader whoever is established in that position. Passive acceptance of the teacher's wisdom is easy to most boys and girls. It involves no effort of independent thought, and seems rational because the teacher knows more than his pupils; it is moreover the way to win the favour of the teacher unless he is a very exceptional man. Yet the habit of passive acceptance is a disastrous one in later life. It causes man to seek and to accept a leader, and to accept as a leader whoever is established in that position. Patriots always talk of dying for their country but never of killing for their country. Science may set limits to knowledge, but should not set limits to imagination. So far as I can remember, there is not one word in the Gospels in praise of intelligence. The greatest challenge to any thinker is stating the problem in a way that will allow a solution. The most savage controversies are those about matters as to which there is no good evidence either way. The people who are regarded as moral luminaries are those who forego ordinary pleasures themselves and find compensation in interfering with the pleasures of others. The people who are regarded as moral luminaries are those who forego ordinary pleasures themselves and find compensation in interfering with the pleasures of others. Bill Gates Just in terms of allocation of time resources, religion is not very efficient. There's a lot more I could be doing on a Sunday morning. Bob Hope A bank is a place that will lend you money if you can prove that you don't need it. No one party can fool all of the people all of the time; that's why we have two parties. People who throw kisses are hopelessly lazy. Boris Pasternak Gregariousness is always the refuge of mediocrities, whether they swear by Soloviev or Kant or Marx. Only individuals seek the truth, and they shun those whose sole concern is not the truth. Brian Adams Learn the art of patience. Apply discipline to your thoughts when they become anxious over the outcome of a goal. Impatience breeds anxiety, fear, discouragement and failure. Patience creates confidence, decisiveness, and a rational outlook, which eventually leads to success.   Buddha A dog is not considered a good dog because he is a good barker. A man is not considered a good man because he is a good talker. All that we are is the result of what we have thought. If a man speaks or acts with an evil thought, pain follows him. If a man speaks or acts with a pure thought, happiness follows him, like a shadow that never leaves him. All things appear and disappear because of the concurrence of causes and conditions. Nothing ever exists entirely alone; everything is in relation to everything else. An idea that is developed and put into action is more important than an idea that exists only as an idea. Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it, no matter if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense. Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it. Do not believe in anything simply because it is spoken and rumored by many. Do not believe in anything simply because it is found written in your religious books. Do not believe in anything merely on the authority of your teachers and elders. Do not believe in traditions because they have been handed down for many generations. But after observation and analysis, when you find that anything agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all, then accept it and live up to it. Ennui has made more gamblers than avarice, more drunkards than thirst, and perhaps as many suicides as despair. Hatred does not cease by hatred, but only by love; this is the eternal rule. Have compassion for all beings, rich and poor alike; each has their suffering. Some suffer too much, others too little. He is able who thinks he is able. He who experiences the unity of life sees his own Self in all beings, and all beings in his own Self, and looks on everything with an impartial eye. Holding on to anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one who gets burned. However many holy words you read, however many you speak, what good will they do you, if you do not act upon them? I do not believe in a fate that falls on men however they act; but I do believe in a fate that falls on them unless they act. I never see what has been done; I only see what remains to be done. It is better to travel well than to arrive. Let us rise up and be thankful, for if we didn't learn a lot today, at least we learned a little, and if we didn't learn a little, at least we didn't get sick, and if we got sick, at least we didn't die; so, let us all be thankful. The foot feels the foot when it feels the ground. There are only two mistakes one can make along the road to truth; not going all the way, and not starting. Therefore, be ye lamps unto yourselves, be a refuge to yourselves. Hold fast to Truth as a lamp; hold fast to the truth as a refuge. Look not for a refuge in anyone beside yourselves. And those, who shall be a lamp unto themselves, shall betake themselves to no external refuge, but holding fast to the Truth as their lamp, and holding fast to the Truth as their refuge, they shall reach the topmost height. The thought manifests as the word; The word manifests as the deed; The deed develops into habit; And habit hardens into character. So watch the thought and its ways with care, And let it spring from love Born out of concern for all beings. Thousands of candles can be lighted from a single candle, and the life of the candle will not be shortened. Happiness never decreases by being shared. Three things cannot be long hidden: the sun, the moon, and the truth. To live a pure unselfish life, one must count nothing as one's own in the midst of abundance. To understand everything is to forgive everything. What is the appropriate behavior for a man or a woman in the midst of this world, where each person is clinging to his piece of debris? What's the proper salutation between people as they pass each other in this flood? What is the appropriate behavior for a man or a woman in the midst of this world, where each person is clinging to his piece of debris? What's the proper salutation between people as they pass each other in this flood? Whatever words we utter should be chosen with care for people will hear them and be influenced by them for good or ill. Work out your own salvation. Do not depend on others. What we think, we become. You cannot travel the path until you have become the path itself. You will not be punished for your anger, you will be punished by your anger. Your work is to discover your work and your world, and then with all your heart to give yourself to them.   Carl Jung As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light of meaning in the darkness of mere being. Every form of addiction is bad, no matter whether the narcotic be alcohol, morphine or idealism. Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to a better understanding of ourselves. Great talents are the most lovely and often the most dangerous fruits on the tree of humanity. They hang upon the most slender twigs that are easily snapped off. If one does not understand a person, one tends to regard him as a fool. It all depends on how we look at things, and not on how they are themselves. Knowledge rests not upon truth alone, but upon error also. Nobody, as long as he moves about among the chaotic currents of life, is without trouble. Nobody, as long as he moves about among the chaotic currents of life, is without trouble. Religion is a defense against the experience of God. The creation of something new is not accomplished by the intellect but by the play instinct acting from inner necessity. The creative mind plays with the objects it loves. The greatest and most important problems of life are all fundamentally insoluble. They can never be solved but only outgrown. The least of things with a meaning is worth more in life than the greatest of things without it. The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances: if there is any reaction, both are transformed. The shoe that fits one person pinches another; there is no recipe for living that suits all cases. The word "happiness" would lose its meaning if it were not balanced by sadness.   Carl Sagan A celibate clergy is an especially good idea, because it tends to suppress any hereditary propensity toward fanaticism. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. All of the books in the world contain no more information than is broadcast as video in a single large American city in a single year. Not all bits have equal value. Anyone who's ever significantly changed the course of humanity has either been a Crackpot, a Heretic, or a Dissident. In the case of Albert Einstein, he was all three! But the fact that some geniuses were laughed at does not imply that all who are laughed at are geniuses. They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown. If we long to believe that the stars rise and set for us, that we are the reason there is a Universe, does science do us a disservice in deflating our conceits? If you want to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe. In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion. It is of interest to note that while some dolphins are reported to have learned English -- up to fifty words used in correct context -- no human being has been reported to have learned dolphinese. One glance at a book and you hear the voice of another person, perhaps someone dead for 1,000 years. To read is to voyage through time. Personally, I would be delighted if there were a life after death, especially if it permitted me to continue to learn about this world and others, if it gave me a chance to discover how history turns out. Science is not only compatible with spirituality; it is a profound source of spirituality. Skeptical scrutiny is the means, in both science and religion, by which deep insights can be winnowed from deep nonsense. The universe is not required to be in perfect harmony with human ambition. The universe seems neither benign nor hostile, merely indifferent. There is much more wonder in science than in pseudoscience. And in addition, to whatever measure this term has any meaning, science has the additional virtue, and it is not an inconsiderable one, of being true. Think of how many religions attempt to validate themselves with prophecy. Think of how many people rely on these prophecies, however vague, however unfulfilled, to support or prop up their beliefs. Yet has there ever been a religion with the prophetic accuracy and reliability of science? When you make the finding yourself - even if you're the last person on Earth to see the light - you'll never forget it. Where we have strong emotions, we're liable to fool ourselves. Who are we? We find that we live on an insignificant planet of a humdrum star lost in a galaxy tucked away in some forgotten corner of a universe in which there are far more galaxies than people.   Charles Darwin A man who dares to waste one hour of time has not discovered the value of life. A man's friendships are one of the best measures of his worth. A moral being is one who is capable of reflecting on his past actions and their motives - of approving of some and disapproving of others. An American monkey, after getting drunk on brandy, would never touch it again, and thus is much wiser than most men. Animals, whom we have made our slaves, we do not like to consider our equal. As for a future life, every man must judge for himself between conflicting vague probabilities." At some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilized races of man will almost certainly… replace the savage races throughout the world. Believing as I do that man in the distant future will be a far more perfect creature than he now is, it is an intolerable thought that he and all other sentient beings are doomed to complete annihilation after such long-continued slow progress” But when on shore, & wandering in the sublime forests, surrounded by views more gorgeous than even Claude ever imagined, I enjoy a delight which none but those who have experienced it can understand. Doing what little one can to increase the general stock of knowledge is as respectable an object of life, as one can in any likelihood pursue. False facts are highly injurious to the progress of science, for they often endure long; but false views, if supported by some evidence, do little harm, for every one takes a salutary pleasure in proving their falseness. I am a strong advocate for free thought on all subjects, yet it appears to me (whether rightly or wrongly) that direct arguments against Christianity & theism produce hardly any effect on the public; and freedom of thought is best promoted by the gradual illumination of men's minds, which follows from the advance of science. It has, therefore, been always my object to avoid writing on religion, and I have confined myself to science. I may, however, have been unduly biased by the pain which it would give some members of my family, if I aided in any way direct attacks on religion. During these two years (March 1837 - January 1839) I was led to think much about religion. Whilst on board the Beagle I was quite orthodox, and I remember being heartily laughed at by several officers (though themselves orthodox) for quoting the Bible as an unanswerable authority on some point of morality. I suppose it was the novelty of the argument that amused them. But I had gradually come by this time (i.e. 1836 to 1839) to see the Old Testament, from its manifestly false history of the world, with the Tower of Babel, the rain-bow as a sign, &c., &c., and from its attributing to God the feelings of a revengeful tyrant, was no more to be trusted than the sacred books of the Hindus, or the beliefs of any barbarian.... Thus disbelief crept over me at a very slow rate, but was at last complete. The rate was so slow that I felt no distress, and have never since doubted for a single second that my conclusion was correct. I can indeed hardly see how anyone ought to wish Christianity to be true; for if so, the plain language of the text seems to show that the men who do not believe, and this would include my Father, Brother, and almost all my best friends, will be everlastingly punished.  And this is a damnable doctrine. Early in 1856 Lyell advised me to write out my views pretty fully, and I began at once to do so on a scale three or four times as extensive as that which was afterwards followed by my Origin of Species; yet it was only an abstract of the materials which I had collected, and I had got through about half the work on this scale. But my plans were overthrown, for early in the summer of 1858 Mr. Wallace, who was then in the Malay Archipelago, sent me an essay "On the tendency of varieties to depart indefinitely from the original type"; and this essay (arrived June 18th) contained exactly the same theory as mine. Mr. Wallace expressed the wish that if I thought well of his essay, I should send it to Lyell for perusal. The circumstances under which I consented at the request of Lyell and Hooker to allow an extract from my own M.S., together with a letter to Asa Grey dated September 5 1857, to be published at the same time with Wallace's essay, are given in the Journal of the Linnean Society 1858 p.45. I was at first very unwilling to consent, as I thought that Mr. Wallace might consider my doing so unjustifiable, for I did not then know how generous and noble was his disposition... Nevertheless our joint productions excited very little attention. I am turned into a sort of machine for observing facts and grinding out conclusions. / My mind seems to have become a kind of machine for grinding general laws out of large collections of facts. I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent and omnipotent God would have designedly created parasitic wasps with the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of Caterpillars. I have called this principle, by which each slight variation, if useful, is preserved, by the term of Natural Selection. I have no great quickness of apprehension or wit which is so remarkable in some clever men, for instance Huxley. I have tried lately to read Shakespeare, and found it so intolerably dull that it nauseated me. I love fools' experiments. I am always making them. I was a young man with uninformed ideas. I threw out queries, suggestions, wondering all the time over everything; and to my astonishment the ideas took like wildfire. People made a religion of them.” I asked for some time to consider (becoming a parson), as from what little I had heard and thought on the subject I had scruples about declaring my belief in all the dogmas of the Church of England; though otherwise I liked the thought of becoming a country clergyman. Accordingly I read with great care Pearson on the Creeds and a few other books on divinity; and as I did not then in the least doubt the strict and literal truth of every word in the Bible, I soon persuaded myself that our Creed must be fully accepted. If the misery of the poor be caused not by the laws of nature, but by our institutions, great is our sin. Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, and not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science. In the long history of humankind (and animal kind, too) those who learned to collaborate and improvise most effectively have prevailed. It is a cursed evil to any man to become as absorbed in any subject as I am in mine. It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change. Man is descended from a hairy, tailed quadruped, probably arboreal in its habits. Man is descended from a hairy, tailed quadruped, probably arboreal in its habits. Man with all his noble qualities, with sympathy which feels for the most debased, with benevolence which extends not only to other men but to the humblest living creature, with his god-like intellect which has penetrated into the movements and constitution of the solar system- with all these exalted powers- Man still bears in his bodily frame the indelible stamp of his lowly origin. Man tends to increase at a greater rate than his means of subsistence. On seeing the marsupials in Australia for the first time and comparing them to placental mammals: "An unbeliever . . . might exclaim 'Surely two distinct Creators must have been at work.'" On the ordinary view of each species having been independently created, we gain no scientific explanation. The mystery of the beginning of all things is insoluble by us; and I for one must be content to remain an agnostic. The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference. To kill an error is as good a service as, and sometimes even better than, the establishing of a new truth or fact. We can allow satellites, planets, suns, universe, nay whole systems of universes, to be governed by laws, but the smallest insect, we wish to be created at once by special act. We must, however, acknowle