Science is properly more scrupulous than dogma. Dogma gives a charter to mistake, but the very breath of science is a contest with mistake, and must keep the conscience alive. – George Eliot
There is no despair so absolute as that which comes with the first moments of our first great sorrow, when we have not yet known what it is to have suffered and be healed, to have despaired and have recovered hope. – George Eliot
We must not inquire too curiously into motives… They are apt to become feeble in the utterance: the aroma is mixed with the grosser air. We must keep the germinating grain away from the light. – George Eliot
The presence of a noble nature, generous in its wishes, ardent in its charity, changes the lights for us: we begin to see things again in their larger, quieter masses, and to believe that we too can be seen and judged in the wholeness of our character. – George Eliot
Todays preoccupation with physical theories of everything takes a wrong turn from the purpose of science – to question all things relentlessly. Modern physics has become like Swifts kingdom of Laputa, flying absurdly on an island above the earth and indifferent to what is beneath. – Robert Lanza