38 Quotes by Joseph Priestley

Many a man is praised for his reserve and so-called shyness when he is simply too proud to risk making a fool of himself.

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.

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

But it is not given to every electrician to die in so glorious a manner as the justly envied Richmann.[G. W. Richmann died from being hit by lightning, which he had been investigating.]

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

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

Lying is a crime the least liable to variation in its definitions. A child will upon the slightest temptation tell an untruth as readily as the truth. That is, as soon as he can suspect that it will be to his advantage; and the dread that he afterward has of telling a lie is acquired principally by his being threatened, punished, and terrified by those who detect him in it, till at length, a number of painful impressions are annexed to the telling of an untruth, and he comes even to shudder at the thought of it.

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

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