Quotes from George Iles

We despair of changing the habits of men, still we would alter institutions, the habits of millions of men.

No gun is perfectly true. So the marksman, that he may hit the bull's-eye, points elsewhere.

To render aid to the worthless is sheer waste. Rain does not freshen the Dead Sea, but only enables it to dissolve more salt.

Ten builders rear an arch, each in turn lifting it higher; but it is the tenth man, who drops in the keystone, who hears our huzzas.

Truth is better disengaged from error than torn from it.

Is any knowledge worthless? Try to think of an example.

A calculating engine is one of the most intricate forms of mechanism, a telegraph key one of the simplest. But compare their value.

Evolution pays and that is why there is evolution

A tree nowhere offers a straight line or a regular curve, but who doubts that root, trunk, boughs, and leaves embody geometry?

When we try to imagine a chaos we fail. ... In its very fiber the mind is an order and refuses to build a chaos.

Discovery begins by finding the discoverer.

A man's own addition to what he learns is cement to bind an otherwise loose heap of stones into a structure of unity, strength, and use.

A superstition is a premature explanation that overstays its time.

Some young folks have wind-fall minds, prematurely detached from the tree of knowledge for a life-long sourness and pettiness.

Let truth be a banner big enough to hide the man who holds it up.

Ignorance may find a truth on its doorstep that erudition vainly seeks in the stars.

Error held as truth has much the effect of truth. In politics and religion this fact upsets many confident predictions.

Hope is faith holding out its hand in the dark.

A superstition is a premature explanation that overstays its time.

Doubt is the beginning, not the end, of wisdom.

Educated folk keep to one another's company too much, leaving other people much like milk skimmed of its cream.

When a learner, in the fullness of his powers, comes to great truths unstaled by premature familiarity, he rejoices in the lateness of his lessons.