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"Whether there be a God and whatever be His nature, I can have no fear of having to suffer for the study of nature and the search for truth."

— Alfred Russel Wallace

Whether There Be A God And

Whether there be a God and whatever be His nature, I can have no fear of having to suffer for the study of nature and the search for truth.

— Alfred Russel Wallace
courage nature truth

About this quote

Wallace wrote this in a letter to Thomas Sims on 2 March 1861, while conducting field research in the Malay Archipelago. He was responding to Sims's questions about his religious views after years spent studying the natural world. Alfred Russel Wallace remained open to unorthodox beliefs throughout his life, later becoming interested in spiritualism — a position that put him at odds with some scientific contemporaries, including Charles Darwin.

Source

Letter to Thomas Sims, 1861

Those who succeed in the race for wealth are by no means the best or the most intelligent.
— Alfred Russel Wallace
Our mastery over the forces of nature has led to a rapid growth of population, and a vast accumulation of wealth; but these have brought with them such an amount of poverty and crime.
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It suddenly flashed upon me that this self-acting process would necessarily improve the race, because in every generation the inferior would inevitably be killed off and the superior would remain.
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