“[T]he instrumental conceptions derived from the use of a common globe are sufficient, in almost every case, for the understanding of the instruments in an Observatory…”

From a Distance (1985)
Context: From a distance we are instruments
Marching in a common band
Playing songs of hope, playing songs of peace
They're the songs of every man.

Source: Selected Essays (1904), "Sacred and Profane" (1891), p. 41

Introduction
Popular Astronomy: A Series of Lectures Delivered at Ipswich (1868)

1960s, Voting Rights Act signing speech (1965)
Context: If you do this, then you will find, as others have found before you, that the vote is the most powerful instrument ever devised by man for breaking down injustice and destroying the terrible walls which imprison men because they are different from other men.

The Concept of the Political (1927)

Chpt.2, p. 9
Principles of Geology (1832), Vol. 1
Context: It is probable that the doctrine of successive destructions and renovations of the world merely received corroboration from such proofs; and that it was originally handed down, like the religious dogmas of most nations, from a ruder state of society. The true source of the system must be sought for in the exaggerated traditions of those partial, but often dreadful catastrophes, which are sometimes occasioned by various combinations of natural causes. Floods and volcanic eruptions, the agency of water and fire, are the chief instruments of devastation on our globe.... it scarcely requires the passion for the marvelous, so characteristic of rude and half-civilized nations, still less the exuberant imagination of eastern writers, to augment them into general cataclysms and conflagrations.

The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883), XIX Philosophical Maxims. Morals. Polemics and Speculations.

Source: Plasticity Into Power: Comparative-Historical Studies on the Institutional Conditions of Economic and Military Success (1987), p. 12

Introduction
Popular Astronomy: A Series of Lectures Delivered at Ipswich (1868)