It was a profound saying of Wilhelm Humboldt, that 'Man is man only by means of speech, but in order to invent speech he must be already man.'

Never call an accountant a credit to his profession; a good accountant is a debit to his profession.

The present is the key to the past

There is no foundation in geological facts, for the popular theory of the successive development of the animal and vegetable world, from the simplest to the most perfect forms.

I long ago suggested the hypothesis, that in the basin of the Thames there are indications of a meeting in the Pleistocene period of a northern and southern fauna.

Geology differs as widely from cosmogony, as speculations concerning the creation of man differ from history.

Never was there a dogma more calculated to foster indolence, and to blunt the keen edge of curiosity, than the assumption of the discordance between the former and the existing causes of change.

Such discoveries have led me, and other geologists, to reconsider the evidence previously derived from caves brought forward in proof of the high antiquity of Man.

That ere long, now that curiosity has been so much excited on this subject, some human remains will be detected in the older alluvium of European valleys, I confidently expect.

When on my return to England I showed the cast of the cranium to Professor Huxley, he remarked at once that it was the most ape-like skull he had ever beheld.

'Time's noblest offspring is the last.' This line of Bishop Berkeley's expresses the real cause of the belief in progress in the animal creation.

Universe is an empty mirror. Life is just the reflection of your deep thoughts.

If beauty had religious and spiritual importance, there would have been your temples all around the world.

If we are facing in the right direction all we have to do is keep on walking.

Genius is not perfected, it is deepened. It does not so much interpret the world as fertilize itself with it.

It was one thing to have guessed it, another to have had that guess confirmed beyond possibility of refutation.

I used to get letters saying, 'I didn't know black children and white children were the same.'

I began to see new buildings, too, which were connected by futuristic walkways lit from beneath. Long, cool perspectives of modern architecture, rising phosphorescent and eerie from the rubble.

By the mid 1970s, the great downtown bookstores had begun to disappear as their customers migrated from city to suburb where population density was too thin to support major backlist retailers.

Besides, who wants to read about success, anyway? Successful serial murderers, maybe.

I have ambitions I want to fulfil, to enjoy more success with Brazil.