I believe there exists, & I feel within me, an instinct for the truth, or knowledge or discovery, of something of the same nature as the instinct of virtue, & that our having such an instinct is reason enough for scientific researches without any practical results ever ensuing from them.
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We are not here concerned with hopes or fears, only with truth as far as our reason permits us to discover it.
Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, and not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science.
Every serious scientific worker is painfully conscious ... of being relegated to an ever-narrowing sphere of knowledge.
If you are out to describe the truth, leave elegance to the tailor.
But hereditary diseases and some other facts make me believe that the rule has a wider extension, and that, when there is no apparent reason why a peculiarity should appear at any particular age, yet it does tend to appear in the offspring at the same period at which it first appeared in the parent. I believe this rule to be of the highest importance in explaining the laws of embryology.
The very essence of instinct is that it's followed independently of reason.
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