"To suppose that the eye with all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest degree." (Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, p.75)

"But, as by this theory innumerable transitional forms must have existed, why do we not find them embedded in countless numbers in the crust of the earth?" (Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, p.163)

"But just in proportion as this process of extermination has acted on an enormous scale, so must the number of intermediate varieties, which have formerly existed on the earth, be truly enormous. Why then is not every geological formation and every stratum full of such intermediate links? Geology assuredly does not reveal any such finely graduated organic chain; and this, perhaps, is the most obvious and gravest objection which can be urged against my theory." (Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, p.323)

“All paleontologists know that the fossil record contains precious little in the way of intermediate forms; transitions between major groups are characteristically abrupt.” (Stephen J. Gould, “The Return of Hopeful Monsters,” p. 23.)

"The extreme rarity of transitional forms in the fossil record persist as the trade secret of paleontology. The evolutionary trees that adorn our textbooks have data only at the tips and nodes of their branches; the rest is inference, however reasonable, not the evidence of fossils ….We fancy ourselves as the only true students of life's history, yet to preserve our favored account of evolution by natural selection we view our data as so bad that we never see the very process we profess to study." (Stephen J. Gould - "Evolution's Erratic Pace," Natural History, vol. 86 (May 1987), p. 14.)

"There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact." (Mark Twain)

""We need not shrink from admitting that candles, like incense and lustral water, were commonly employed in pagan worship and in the rites paid to the dead. But the Church from a very early period took them into her service, just as she adopted many other things indifferent in themselves, which seemed proper to enhance the splendour of religious ceremonial. We must not forget that most of these adjuncts to worship, like music, lights, perfumes, ablutions, floral decorations, canopies, fans, screens, bells, vestments, etc. were not identified with any idolatrous cult in particular; they were common to almost all cults." (Cath. Ency., III, 246)." (Catholicism Against Itself, O.C. Lambert)

""The Pope himself is subject to error like other men; his infallibility comes from the Spirit of God, which on certain occasions protects him from error in faith and morals. He has no infallibility in merely historical or scientific questions. Even in matters of faith and morals he has no inspiration, and must use the same means of theological inquiry open to other men. He may err as a private doctor; nor is any immunity from error granted to books which he may write and publish. Even when he speaks with Apostolic authority he may err" (Cath. Dic., 677)." (Catholicism Against Itself, O.C. Lambert)

""Once he does so, he has no further use for his reason. He enters the Church, an edifice illuminated by the superior light of revelation and faith. He can leave reason, like a lantern, at the door" (Explanation of Catholic Morals,76)." (Catholicism Against Itself, O.C. Lambert)

"Here were the charms of music to allure them into a compliance and the terrors of the fiery furnace to frighten them into a compliance....Note, That way that sense directs the most will go; there is nothing so bad which the careless world will not be drawn to by a concert of music, or driven to by a fiery furnace. And by such methods as these false worship has been set up and maintained" - Matthew Henry commenting on Daniel 3.

"We must also put away all notion of self-importance. God will not bless the man who thinks himself great. To glory even in the work of God the Holy Spirit in yourself, is to tread dangerously near to self-adulation. "Let another man praise thee, and not thine own mouth," and be very glad when that other has sense enough to hold his tongue." (Lectures to My Students, Spurgeon, p. 223-224)

"Treat a man as he appears to be, and you make him worse. But treat a man as if he were what he potentially could be, and you make him what he should be." - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

"We must never think the worse of any truth of God, nor be more shy of owning it, for its being held by men otherwise corrupt." - Matthew Henry on Acts 23:6

"How frequently, in the course of our lives, the evil which in itself we seek most to shun, and which, when we are fallen into, is the most dreadful to us, is oftentimes the very means or door of our deliverance, by which alone we can be raised again from the affliction we are fallen into." - Robinson Crusoe, p. 387

"Think as wise men do, but speak as the common people do." - Aristotle

"Men stumble over the truth from time to time, but most pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing happened." – Winston Churchill

"When you want to help people, you tell them the truth. When you want to help yourself, you tell them what they want to hear." - Thomas Sowell