Joseph Priestley Quotes

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

The wisdom of one generation will be folly in the next.

I have procured air [oxygen] ... between five and six times as good as the best common air that I have ever met with.

The greater part of critics are parasites, who, if nothing had been written, would find nothing to write.

In completing one discovery we never fail to get an imperfect knowledge of others of which we could have no idea before, so that we cannot solve one doubt without creating several new ones.

The more elaborate our means of our common sense is, the less the common sense it becomes.

When we say there is a GOD, we mean that there is an intelligent designing cause of what we see in the world around us, and a being who was himself uncaused.

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

Orthodoxy, my Lord,: said Bishop Warburton, in a whisper, — orthodoxy is my doxy, — heterodoxy is another man's doxy.

In completing one discovery we never fail to get an imperfect knowledge of others.

We should like to have some towering geniuses, to reveal us to ourselves in color and fire.

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

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.

But it is not given to every electrician to die in so glorious a manner as the justly envied Richmann.

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

From the fame opinion of a soul distinct from the body came the practice of praying, first for the dead, and then to them with a long train of other absurd opinions, and superstitious practices.

Too many christians have been chargeable with... confounding the Logos of Plato with that of John , and making of it a second person in the trinity, than which no two things can be more different.

This is unfortunately a world in which things find it difficult, frequently impossible, to live up to their names.

"Orthodoxy my Lord " said Bishop Warburton in a whisper - "orthodoxy is my doxy - heterodoxy is another man's doxy."

In all controversies, it is better to wait the decisions of time, which are slow and sure, than to take those of synods, which are often hasty and injudicious