Related:

• The ideal reasoner, would, when he had once been shown a single fact in all its bearing
  deduce from it not only the chain of events which led up to it but also the results which would follow from it....
• Man's unfailing capacity to believe what he prefers to be true rather than what the evidence shows to be likely and possible has always astounded me.
  We long for a caring Universe which will save us from our childish mistakes, and in the face of mountains of evidence to the contrary we will pin all our hopes on the slimmest of doubts....
• The universe is but one vast Symbol of God. -- Thomas Carlyle
• I like to have a man's knowledge comprehend more than one class of topics, one row of shelves.
  I like a man who likes to see a fine barn as well as a good tragedy. -- Emerso...
• One monster there is in the world, the idle man. -- Thomas Carlyle
• The greatest of all faults is to be conscious of none. Thomas Carlyle
• The citizens of the United States of America have a right to applaud themselves for having given to mankind examples of an enlarged and liberal policy--a policy worthy of imitation.
  All possess alike liberty of conscience and immunities of citizenship....
• Once, when the secrets of science were the jealously guarded property of a small priesthood, the common man had no hope of mastering their arcane complexities.
  Years of study in musty classrooms were prerequisite to obtaining even a dim, incoherent knowledge of science....
• Why, when no honest man will deny in private that every ultimate problem is wrapped in the profoundest mystery
  do honest men proclaim in pulpits that unhesitating certainty is the duty of the most foolish and ignorant?...