Joseph Priestley FRS was an English chemist, natural philosopher, separatist theologian, grammarian, multi-subject educator, and liberal political theorist. He published over 150 works, and conducted experiments in several areas of science.

Joseph Priestley Quotes

1. “Every man, when he comes to be sensible of his natural rights, and to feel his own importance, will consider himself as fully equal to any other person whatever.”
— Joseph Priestley

2. “It is no use speaking in soft, gentle tones if everyone else is shouting.”
— Joseph Priestley

3. “Could we have entered into the mind of Sir Isaac Newton, and have traced all the steps by which he produced his great works, we might see nothing very extraordinary in the process.”
— Joseph Priestley

4. “To me there is in happiness an element of self-forgetfulness. You lose yourself in something outside yourself when you are happy; just as when you are desperately miserable you are intensely conscious of yourself, are a solid little lump of ego weighing a ton.”
— Joseph Priestley

5. “Orthodoxy, my Lord,: said Bishop Warburton, in a whisper, – orthodoxy is my doxy, – heterodoxy is another man’s doxy.”
— Joseph Priestley

6. “This is unfortunately a world in which things find it difficult, frequently impossible, to live up to their names.”
— Joseph Priestley

7. “It is hardly possible not to suspect the truth of this doctrine of atonement, when we consider that the general maxims to which it may be reduced, are nowhere laid down, or asserted, in the Scriptures, but others quite contrary to them.”
— Joseph Priestley

8. “From the fame opinion of a soul distinct from the body came the practice of praying, first for the dead, and then to them with a long train of other absurd opinions, and superstitious practices.”
— Joseph Priestley

9. “We should like to have some towering geniuses, to reveal us to ourselves in color and fire…”
— Joseph Priestley

10. “Will is nothing more than a particular case of the general doctrine of association of ideas, and therefore a perfectly mechanical thing.”
— Joseph Priestley

11. “Had Mr. Gibbon lived in France, Spain, or Italy, he might with the fame reason have ranked the doctrine of transubstantiation, and the worship of saints and angels among the essentials of Christianity, as the doctrines of the trinity and of the atonement.”
— Joseph Priestley

12. “The wisdom of one generation will be folly in the next.”
— Joseph Priestley

13. “In completing one discovery we never fail to get an imperfect knowledge of others of which we could have no idea before, so that we cannot solve one doubt without creating several new ones.”
— Joseph Priestley

14. “What I have known with respect to myself, has tended much to lessen both my admiration, and my contempt, of others.”
— Joseph Priestley

15. “The greater part of critics are parasites, who, if nothing had been written, would find nothing to write.”
— Joseph Priestley

16. “When we say there is a GOD, we mean that there is an intelligent designing cause of what we see in the world around us, and a being who was himself uncaused.”
— Joseph Priestley

17. “But it is not given to every electrician to die in so glorious a manner as the justly envied Richmann.”
— Joseph Priestley

18. “The more elaborate our means of our common sense is, the less the common sense it becomes.”
— Joseph Priestley

19. “The more elaborate our means of communication, the less we communicate.”
— Joseph Priestley