Words matter. These are the best Alfred Russel Wallace Quotes, and they’re great for sharing with your friends.
There is, I conceive, no contradiction in believing that mind is at once the cause of matter and of the development of individualised human minds through the agency of matter.
In my solitude I have pondered much on the incomprehensible subjects of space, eternity, life and death.
What birds can have their bills more peculiarly formed than the ibis, the spoonbill, and the heron?
In all works on Natural History, we constantly find details of the marvellous adaptation of animals to their food, their habits, and the localities in which they are found.
I have since wandered among men of many races and many religions.
On the spiritual theory, man consists essentially of a spiritual nature or mind intimately associated with a spiritual body or soul, both of which are developed in and by means of a material organism.
Civilisation has ever accompanied emigration and conquest – the conflict of opinion, of religion, or of race.
The foregoing considerations lead us to the very important conclusion, that matter is essentially force, and nothing but force; that matter, as popularly understood, does not exist, and is, in fact, philosophically inconceivable.
To say that mind is a product or function of protoplasm, or of its molecular changes, is to use words to which we can attach no clear conception.
I spent, as you know, a year and a half in a clergyman’s family and heard almost every Tuesday the very best, most earnest and most impressive preacher it has ever been my fortune to meet with, but it produced no effect whatever on my mind.
Modification of form is admitted to be a matter of time.
It has been generally the custom of writers on natural history to take the habits and instincts of animals as the fixed point, and to consider their structure and organization as specially adapted to be in accordance with them.
To expect the world to receive a new truth, or even an old truth, without challenging it, is to look for one of those miracles which do not occur.
What we need are not prohibitory marriage laws, but a reformed society, an educated public opinion which will teach individual duty in these matters.
I hold with Henry George, that at the back of every great social evil will be found a great political wrong.
Truth is born into this world only with pangs and tribulations, and every fresh truth is received unwillingly.
I am decidedly of the opinion that in very many instances we can trace such a necessary connexion, especially among birds, and often with more complete success than in the case which I have here attempted to explain.