Joseph Priestley Quotes

Joseph Priestley provides plain-spoken thoughts on society, reality, and children.

40 quotes

1. As I conceive this doctrine to be a gross misrepresentation of the character and moral government of God, and to affect many other articles in the scheme of Christianity, greatly disfiguring and depraving it; I shall show, ... that it has no countenance whatever in reason, or the Scriptures; and, therefore, that the whole doctrine of atonement, with every modification of it, has been a departure from the primitive and genuine doctrine of Christianity.

2. As we read the school reports on our children, we realize a sense of relief that can rise to delight that thank Heaven nobody is reporting in this fashion on us.

3. 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.

4. I have always been delighted at the prospect of a new day, a fresh try, one more start, with perhaps a bit of magic waiting somewhere behind the morning...

5. I never read the life of any important person without discovering that he knew more and could do more than I could ever hope to know or do in half a dozen lifetimes.

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

7. Like its politicians and its war, society has the teenagers it deserves.

8. Living in an age of advertisement, we are perpetually disillusioned. The perfect life is spread before us every day, but it changes and withers at a touch.

9. 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.

10. Marriage is like paying an endless visit in your worst clothes.

11. She was a handsome woman of forty-five and would remain so for many years.

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

13. The more elaborate our means of communication, the less we communicate.

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

15. To different minds, the same world is a hell, and a heaven.

16. To me there is in happiness an element of self-forgetfulness. You lose yourself in something outside yourself when you are happy; just as when you are desperately miserable you are intensely conscious of yourself, are a solid little lump of ego weighing a ton.

17. To show a child what once delighted you, to find the child's delight added to your own - this is happiness.

18. We pay when old for the excesses of youth.

19. 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.

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

21. When I was young there was no respect for the young, and now that I am old there is no respect for the old. I missed out coming and going.

22. One of the few lives precious to mankind. ~ Thomas Jefferson

23. [The doctrine of air] I was led into in consequence of inhabiting a house adjoining to a public brewery, where I at first amused myself with making experiments on the fixed air [carbon dioxide] which I found ready made in the process of fermentation . When I removed from that house I was under the necessity of making the fixed air for myself; and one experiment leading to another, as I have distinctly and faithfully noted in my various publications on the subject, I by degrees contrived a convenient apparatus for the purpose, but of the cheapest kind.

24. 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.

25. The greater is the circle of light, the greater is the boundary of the darkness by which it is confined. But, notwithstanding this, the more light get, the more thankful we ought to be, for by this means we have the greater range for satisfactory contemplation. time the bounds of light will be still farther extended; and from the infinity of the divine nature, and the divine works, we may promise ourselves an endless progress in our investigation them: a prospect truly sublime and glorious.

26. It is known to all persons who are conversant in experimental philosophy, that there are many little attentions and precautions necessary to be observed in the conducting of experiments, which cannot well be described in words, but which it is needless to describe, since practice will necessarily suggest them; though, like all other arts in which the hands and fingers are made use of, it is only much practice that can enable a person to go through complex experiments, of this or any kind, with ease and readiness.

27. It is hardly possible not to suspect the truth of this doctrine of atonement, when we consider that the general maxims to which it may be reduced, are nowhere laid down, or asserted, in the Scriptures, but others quite contrary to them.

28. We find upon all occasions, the early Christian writers speak of the Father as superior to the Son, and in general they give him the title of God , as distinguished from the Son; and sometimes they expressly call him, exclusively of the Son, the only true God ; a phraseology which does not at all accord with the idea of the perfect equality of all the persons in the Trinity. But it might well be expected, that the advances to the present doctrine of the Trinity should be gradual and slow. It was, indeed, some centuries before it was completely formed.

29. 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.

30. The feeling of it to my lungs was not sensibly different from that of common air; but I fancied that my breast felt peculiarly light and easy for some time afterwards. Who can tell but that, in time, this pure air may become a fashionable article in luxury. Hitherto only two mice and myself have had the privilege of breathing it.

31. Had Mr. Gibbon lived in France, Spain, or Italy, he might with the fame reason have ranked the doctrine of transubstantiation, and the worship of saints and angels among the essentials of Christianity, as the doctrines of the trinity and of the atonement.

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

33. It pleased God to make one nation the medium of all His communications with mankind: This the nation of the Jews has done to a considerable degree in all ages As civilization extended, they by one means or another became most wonderfully dispersed through all countries; and at this day they are almost literally everywhere, the most conspicuous, and in the eye of reason and religion, the most respectable nation on the face of the earth.

34. Let us not... contend about merit , but let us all be intent on forwarding the common enterprize , and equally enjoy any progress we may make towards succeeding in it; and above all, let us acknowledge the guidance of that Great Being, who has put a spirit in man, and whose inspiration giveth him understanding .

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

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

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

38. 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.

39. It is sufficiently evident from many circumstances, that the doctrine of the divinity of Christ did not establish itself without much opposition, especially from the unlearned among the Christians, who thought that it savoured of Polytheism , that it was introduced by those who had had a philosophical education, and was by degrees adopted by others, on account of its covering the great offence of the cross , by exalting the personal dignity of our Saviour.

40. 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.