TODAY IN SCIENCE HISTORY ®  •  TODAYINSCI ®
Celebrating 25 Years on the Web
Find science on or your birthday

Today in Science History - Quickie Quiz
Who said: “A change in motion is proportional to the motive force impressed and takes place along the straight line in which that force is impressed.”
more quiz questions >>
Home > Dictionary of Science Quotations > Scientist Names Index D > Clarence Darrow Quotes

Clarence Darrow
(18 Apr 1857 - 13 Mar 1938)

American lawyer who defended John Scopes in the “Monkey Trial” in Tennessee (1925).

Science Quotes by Clarence Darrow (4 quotes)

Education was in danger from the source that always hampered it—religious fanaticism.
— Clarence Darrow
In The Story of My Life (1932), 249. How he described his reason to act for the defendant in the Scopes Monkey Trial.
Science quotes on:  |  Danger (127)  |  Education (423)  |  Religious (134)  |  Source (101)

I think this case will be remembered because it is the first case of this sort since we stopped trying people in America for witchcraft, because here we have done our best to turn back the tide that has sought to force itself upon this modern world, of testing every fact in science by a religious dictum.
— Clarence Darrow
Final remarks to the Court after the jury verdict was read at the Scopes Monkey Trial Eighth day's proceedings (21 Jul 1925) in John Thomas Scopes, The World's Most Famous Court Trial: Tennessee Evolution Case: a Complete Stenographic Report of the Famous Court Test of the Tennessee Anti-Evolution Act, at Dayton, July 10 to 21, 1925, Including Speeches and Arguments of Attorneys (1925), 316.
Science quotes on:  |  America (143)  |  Back (395)  |  Best (467)  |  Case (102)  |  Dictum (10)  |  Fact (1257)  |  First (1302)  |  Force (497)  |  Modern (402)  |  Modern World (5)  |  People (1031)  |  Religious (134)  |  Remember (189)  |  Science And Religion (337)  |  Scopes Monkey Trial (9)  |  Test (221)  |  Think (1122)  |  Tide (37)  |  Trying (144)  |  Turn (454)  |  Will (2350)  |  Witchcraft (6)  |  World (1850)

If today you can take a thing like evolution and make it a crime to teach it in the public schools, tomorrow you can make it a crime to teach it in the private schools, and next year you can make it a crime to teach it to the hustings or in the church. At the next session you may ban books and the newspapers. Soon you may set Catholic against Protestant and Protestant against Protestant, and try to foist your own religion upon the minds of men. If you can do one you can do the other. Ignorance and fanaticism are ever busy and need feeding. Always it is feeding and gloating for more. Today it is the public school teachers; tomorrow the private. The next day the preachers and the lecturers, the magazines, the books, the newspapers. After a while, Your Honor, it is the setting of man against man and creed against creed until with flying banners and beating drums we are marching backward to the glorious ages of the sixteenth century when bigots lighted fagots to burn the men who dared to bring any intelligence and enlightenment and culture to the human mind.
— Clarence Darrow
Darrow’s concluding remarks before adjournment of the second day of the Scopes Monkey Trial, Dayton, Tennessee (Monday, 13 Jul 1925). In The World's Most Famous Court Trial: Tennessee Evolution Case: a Complete Stenographic Report of the Famous Court Test of the Tennessee Anti-Evolution Act, at Dayton, July 10 to 21, 1925 (1925), Second Day's Proceedings, 87.
Science quotes on:  |  Against (332)  |  Age (509)  |  Banner (9)  |  Bigot (6)  |  Book (413)  |  Burn (99)  |  Catholic (18)  |  Century (319)  |  Church (64)  |  Creed (28)  |  Crime (39)  |  Culture (157)  |  Do (1905)  |  Drum (8)  |  Education (423)  |  Enlightenment (21)  |  Evolution (635)  |  Flying (74)  |  Glorious (49)  |  Honor (57)  |  Human (1512)  |  Human Mind (133)  |  Ignorance (254)  |  Intelligence (218)  |  Lecturer (13)  |  Light (635)  |  Man (2252)  |  Mind (1377)  |  More (2558)  |  Next (238)  |  Other (2233)  |  Preacher (13)  |  Religion (369)  |  School (227)  |  Set (400)  |  Setting (44)  |  Soon (187)  |  Teach (299)  |  Teacher (154)  |  Thing (1914)  |  Today (321)  |  Tomorrow (63)  |  Try (296)  |  Year (963)

The origin of what we call civilization is not due to religion but to skepticism. … The modern world is the child of doubt and inquiry, as the ancient world was the child of fear and faith.
— Clarence Darrow
In Summer for the Gods by Edward J. Larson (1997).
Science quotes on:  |  Ancient (198)  |  Call (781)  |  Child (333)  |  Civilization (220)  |  Doubt (314)  |  Due (143)  |  Faith (209)  |  Fear (212)  |  Inquiry (88)  |  Modern (402)  |  Origin (250)  |  Religion (369)  |  Skepticism (31)  |  World (1850)


Carl Sagan Thumbnail In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion. (1987) -- Carl Sagan
Quotations by:Albert EinsteinIsaac NewtonLord KelvinCharles DarwinSrinivasa RamanujanCarl SaganFlorence NightingaleThomas EdisonAristotleMarie CurieBenjamin FranklinWinston ChurchillGalileo GalileiSigmund FreudRobert BunsenLouis PasteurTheodore RooseveltAbraham LincolnRonald ReaganLeonardo DaVinciMichio KakuKarl PopperJohann GoetheRobert OppenheimerCharles Kettering  ... (more people)

Quotations about:Atomic  BombBiologyChemistryDeforestationEngineeringAnatomyAstronomyBacteriaBiochemistryBotanyConservationDinosaurEnvironmentFractalGeneticsGeologyHistory of ScienceInventionJupiterKnowledgeLoveMathematicsMeasurementMedicineNatural ResourceOrganic ChemistryPhysicsPhysicianQuantum TheoryResearchScience and ArtTeacherTechnologyUniverseVolcanoVirusWind PowerWomen ScientistsX-RaysYouthZoology  ... (more topics)
Sitewide search within all Today In Science History pages:
Visit our Science and Scientist Quotations index for more Science Quotes from archaeologists, biologists, chemists, geologists, inventors and inventions, mathematicians, physicists, pioneers in medicine, science events and technology.

Names index: | A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J | K | L | M | N | O | P | Q | R | S | T | U | V | W | X | Y | Z |

Categories index: | 1 | 2 | A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J | K | L | M | N | O | P | Q | R | S | T | U | V | W | X | Y | Z |
Thank you for sharing.
- 100 -
Sophie Germain
Gertrude Elion
Ernest Rutherford
James Chadwick
Marcel Proust
William Harvey
Johann Goethe
John Keynes
Carl Gauss
Paul Feyerabend
- 90 -
Antoine Lavoisier
Lise Meitner
Charles Babbage
Ibn Khaldun
Euclid
Ralph Emerson
Robert Bunsen
Frederick Banting
Andre Ampere
Winston Churchill
- 80 -
John Locke
Bronislaw Malinowski
Bible
Thomas Huxley
Alessandro Volta
Erwin Schrodinger
Wilhelm Roentgen
Louis Pasteur
Bertrand Russell
Jean Lamarck
- 70 -
Samuel Morse
John Wheeler
Nicolaus Copernicus
Robert Fulton
Pierre Laplace
Humphry Davy
Thomas Edison
Lord Kelvin
Theodore Roosevelt
Carolus Linnaeus
- 60 -
Francis Galton
Linus Pauling
Immanuel Kant
Martin Fischer
Robert Boyle
Karl Popper
Paul Dirac
Avicenna
James Watson
William Shakespeare
- 50 -
Stephen Hawking
Niels Bohr
Nikola Tesla
Rachel Carson
Max Planck
Henry Adams
Richard Dawkins
Werner Heisenberg
Alfred Wegener
John Dalton
- 40 -
Pierre Fermat
Edward Wilson
Johannes Kepler
Gustave Eiffel
Giordano Bruno
JJ Thomson
Thomas Kuhn
Leonardo DaVinci
Archimedes
David Hume
- 30 -
Andreas Vesalius
Rudolf Virchow
Richard Feynman
James Hutton
Alexander Fleming
Emile Durkheim
Benjamin Franklin
Robert Oppenheimer
Robert Hooke
Charles Kettering
- 20 -
Carl Sagan
James Maxwell
Marie Curie
Rene Descartes
Francis Crick
Hippocrates
Michael Faraday
Srinivasa Ramanujan
Francis Bacon
Galileo Galilei
- 10 -
Aristotle
John Watson
Rosalind Franklin
Michio Kaku
Isaac Asimov
Charles Darwin
Sigmund Freud
Albert Einstein
Florence Nightingale
Isaac Newton


by Ian Ellis
who invites your feedback
Thank you for sharing
on Blue Sky.
Today in Science History
Sign up for Newsletter
with quiz, quotes and more.