John Tyndall

Knowledge once gained casts a light beyond its own immediate boundaries.

— John Tyndall

Knowledge once gained casts a faint light beyond its own immediate boundaries.

— John Tyndall

The experimental researches of Faraday are so voluminous, their descriptions are so detailed, and their wealth of illustration is so great, as to render it a heavy labour to master them. The multiplication of proofs, necessary and interesting when the new truths had to be established, are however less needful now when these truths have become household words in science.

— John Tyndall

Life is a wave, which in no two consecutive moments of its existence is composed of the same particles.

— John Tyndall

The mind of man may be compared to a musical instrument with a certain range of notes, beyond which in both directions we have an infinitude of silence.

— John Tyndall

The brightest flashes in the world of thought are incomplete until they have been proved to have their counterparts in the world of fact.

— John Tyndall

It is as fatal as it is cowardly to blink facts because they are not to our taste.

— John Tyndall

Charles Darwin, the Abraham of scientific men — a searcher as obedient to the command of truth as was the patriarch to the command of God.

— John Tyndall

Superstition may be defined as constructive religion which has grown incongruous with intelligence.

— John Tyndall

Religious feeling is as much a verity as any other part of human consciousness; and against it, on the subjective side, the waves of science beat in vain.

— John Tyndall

To Principal Caird... imaging of the Unseen is of inestimable value. It furnishes an objective counterpart to religious emotion, permanent but plastic—capable of indefinite change and purification in response to the changing thoughts and aspirations of mankind.

— John Tyndall

The Apocrypha... ought to be bound up with all your Bibles; it contains much that is beautiful and wise, and there is in history nothing finer than the description of Eleazar's end.

— John Tyndall

Almost every faith can point to its rejoicing martyrs.

— John Tyndall

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

— John Tyndall

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 Master whom he served.

— John Tyndall

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 the apostles, was boldly inscribed. The end being held to sanctify the means, there was no lack of manufactured testimony.

— John Tyndall

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

— John Tyndall

Then arose the sect of the Gnostics—men who know — who laid claim to the possession of a perfect science, and who, if they were to be believed, had discovered the true formula for what philosophers called 'the Absolute.' But these speculative Gnostics were rejected by the conservative and orthodox Christians of their day as fiercely as their successors the Agnostics —men who don't know—are rejected by the orthodox in our own.

— John Tyndall

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.

— John Tyndall

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

— John Tyndall

[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.

— John Tyndall

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

— John Tyndall

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 force, and who guided it blindly.

— John Tyndall

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

— John Tyndall

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 ceased to be the raiment of man's spiritual life. To that life he looked, and it he sought to restore.

— John Tyndall

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

— John Tyndall

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 associations. But...when its passages are invoked to justify the imposition of a yoke, irksome because unnatural, we are driven in self-defence to be critical.

— John Tyndall

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.

— John Tyndall

[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.

— John Tyndall

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.

— John Tyndall

[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.

— John Tyndall

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

— 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 putting it in irons. But they failed; and their failure ought to be a warning to their successors.

— John Tyndall