Joseph Priestley

Could we have entered into the mind of Sir Isaac Newton, and have traced all the steps by which he produced his great works, we might see nothing very extraordinary in the process. 

Like its politicians and its war, society has the teenagers it deserves. 

The more elaborate our means of communication, the less we communicate. 

What I have known with respect to myself, has tended much to lessen both my admiration, and my contempt, of others. 

It is no use speaking in soft, gentle tones if everyone else is shouting. 

We should like to have some towering geniuses, to reveal us to ourselves in color and fire, but of course they would have to fit into the pattern of our society and be able to take orders from sound administrative types. 

As we read the school reports on our children, we realize a sense of relief that can rise to delight that thank Heaven nobody is reporting in this fashion on us. 

Will is nothing more than a particular case of the general doctrine of association of ideas, and therefore a perfectly mechanical thing. 

Every man, when he comes to be sensible of his natural rights, and to feel his own importance, will consider himself as fully equal to any other person whatever.

The History of Electricity is a field full of pleasing objects, according to all the genuine and universal principles of taste, deduced from a knowledge of human nature.

The mind of man can never be wholly barren. Through our whole lives we are subject to successive impressions; for, either new ideas are continually flowing in, or traces of the old ones are marked deeper.

As all finite things require a cause, infinites admit of none … we are constrained, in pursuing the train of causes and effects, to stop at last at something uncaused.