“It would appear… that moral phenomena, when observed on a great scale, are found to resemble physical phenomena; and we thus arrive.”

And affords the only secure ground on which the truth or falsehood of the theories and hypotheses of that complicated science can be brought to the test.

The more do individual peculiarities, whether physical or moral, become effaced.

We may even judge the degree of perfection to which a science has arrived by the facility with which it may be submitted to calculation.

In inquiries of this kind, at the fundamental principle, that the greater the number of individuals observe.

Whether statistics be an art or a science… or a scientific art.

And leave in a prominent point of view the general facts, by virtue of which society exists and is preserved.

It is the basis of social and political dynamics.

The more progress physical sciences make, the more they tend to enter the domain of mathematics, which is a kind of centre to which they all converge.

We concern ourselves little.

When I reappear it will be in the dusky ring, which is something like the state of the air supposing the siege of Sebastopol conducted from a forest of guns 100 miles one way, and 30,000 miles the other, and the shot never to stop, but go spinning away round a circle, radius 170,000 miles.

Girls have that wonderful thing where they try to throw each other off, not wanting to appear too eager.

This is the epitaph I want on my tomb: Here lies one of the most intelligent animals who ever appeared on the face of the earth.

Science appears to us with a very different aspect after we have found out that it is not in lecture rooms only, and by means of the electric light projected on a screen, that we may witness physical phenomena.

But that we may find illustrations of the highest doctrines of science in games and gymnastics, in travelling by land and by water, in storms of the air and of the sea, and wherever there is matter in motion.

But today, in the world’s most powerful democracy, the politicians and the propagandists prefer to make nonsense of democratic procedures by appealing almost exclusively to the ignorance and irrationality of the electors.

A star appeared…and was momentarily eclipsed by some movement.

Every novel is a biography. Well, then, this is a novel [The Paper Men] which is a biography that is pretending to be an autobiography. That’s what you could say about it.