John Tyndall: Quotes about the world

“Christ found the religions of the world oppressed almost to suffocation by the load of formulas piled upon them by the priesthood. He removed the load, and rendered respiration free.”

John Tyndall

New Fragments (1892)
Context: Christ found the religions of the world oppressed almost to suffocation by the load of formulas piled upon them by the priesthood. He removed the load, and rendered respiration free. He cared little for forms and ceremonies, which had ceased to be the raiment of man's spiritual life. To that life he looked, and it he sought to restore.<!--pp. 11-12

World , Religion , Christ

“The brightest flashes in the world of thought are incomplete until they have been proved to have their counterparts in the world of fact.”

John Tyndall

Scientific Materialism.
Fragments of Science, Vol. II (1879)

World

“Some years ago I found myself in discussion with a friend who entertained the notion that the general tendency of things in this world is towards equilibrium, the result of which would be peace and blessedness to the human race. My notion, was that equilibrium meant… death. No motive power is to be got from heat, save during its fall from a higher to a lower temperature, as no power is to be got from water save during its descent from a higher to a lower level. Thus also life consists, not in equilibrium, but in the passage towards equilibrium. In man it is the leap from the potential through the actual to repose.”

John Tyndall

p, 125
New Fragments (1892)

Life , Death , World , Peace

“With terrible jolts and oscillations the religious life of the world has run down 'the ringing grooves of change.' A smoother route may have been undiscoverable. At all events it was undiscovered.”

John Tyndall

p, 125
New Fragments (1892)