John Tyndall

To legislation... the Puritans resorted. Instead of guiding, they repressed, and thus pitted themselves against the unconquerable impulses of human nature. Believing that nature to be depraved, they felt themselves logically warranted in …

History is the record of a vast experimental investigation—of a search by man after the best conditions of existence.

[T]he most fatal error that could be committed by the leaders of religious thought is the attempt to force into their own age conceptions which have lived their life, and come to their natural end in preceding ages.

We ought not to judge superior men without reference to the spirit of their age. This is an influence from which they cannot escape, and so far as it extenuates their errors it ought to be pleaded in their favour.

be regarded as the victim of a rude legal rendering of a religious epic.

The man who was executed for gathering sticks

[O]f the future form of religion little can be predicted. Its main concern may possibly be to purify, elevate, and brighten the life that now is, instead of treating it as the more or less dismal vestibule of a life that is to come.

Religion lives not by the force and aid of dogma, but because it is ingrained in the nature of man. ...the moulds have been broken and reconstructed over and over again, but the molten ore abides in the ladle of humanity.

That there were 'weeds' in the Bible requiring to be kept out of sight was to me... a new revelation. I take little pleasure in dwelling upon the errors and blemishes of a book rendered venerable to me by intrinsic wisdom and imperishable …

Science, which is the logic of nature, demands proportion between the house and its foundation. Theology sometimes builds weighty structures on a doubtful base.

Christ found the religions of the world oppressed almost to suffocation by the load of formulas piled upon them by the priesthood. He removed the load, and rendered respiration free. He cared little for forms and ceremonies, which had …

[W]aste in intellect may be as much an incident of growth as waste in nature.

The yoke of religion has not always been easy, nor its burden light—a result arising, in part from the ignorance of the world at large, but more especially from the mistakes of those who had the charge and guidance of a great spiritual …

Discussion, therefore, is one of the motive powers of life, and, as such, is not to be deprecated.

[T]he enunciation of a thought in advance of the moment provokes dissent or evokes approval, and thus promotes action. The thought may be unwise; but it is only by discussion, checked by experience, that its value can be determined.

[K]nowledge and progress are the fruits of action.

life consists, not in equilibrium, but in the passage towards equilibrium. In man it is the leap from the potential through the actual to repose.

With terrible jolts and oscillations the religious life of the world has run down 'the ringing grooves of change.' A smoother route may have been undiscoverable. At all events it was undiscovered.

The Christian world seethed not only with apocryphal writings, but with hostile interpretations of writings not apocryphal.

When arguments or proofs were needed, whether on the side of the Jewish Christians or of the Gentile Christians, a document was discovered which met the case, and on which the name of an apostle, or of some authoritative contemporary of …

We who have been born into a settled state of things can hardly realise the commotion out of which this tranquillity has emerged.

I leave it to you to compare this Christian hero [Paul] with some of the 'freethinkers' of our own day, who, 'more intolerant than the intolerance they deprecate,' flaunt in public their cheap and trumpery theories of the great Apostle and …

The strength of faith is... no proof of the objective truth of faith.

Almost every faith can point to its rejoicing martyrs.