Thus at every step we are reminded that we by no means rule over nature like a conqueror over a foreign people, like someone standing outside nature - but that we, with flesh, blood and brain, belong to nature, and exist in its midst, and that all our mastery of it consists in the fact that we have the advantage over all other creatures of being able to learn its laws and apply them correctly.

So says the most ancient book of the Earth; thus it is written on its leaves of marble, lime, sand, slate, and clay: ... that our Earth has fashioned itself, from its chaos of substances and powers, through the animating warmth of the creative spirit, to a peculiar and original whole, by a series of preparatory revolutions, till at last the crown of its creation, the exquisite and tender creature man, was enabled to appear.

Scopes isn’t on trial; civilization is on trial.

The indefatigable pursuit of an unattainable perfection -even though nothing more than the pounding of an old piano -is what alone gives a meaning to our life on this unavailing star.

I have always been an old-line Henry Clay Whig.

Nothing ever gets settled in this town. a seething debating society in which the debate never stops, in which people never give up, including me. And so that's the atmosphere in which you administer.