My mind seems to have become a kind of machine for grinding general laws out of large collections of facts.

I am turned into a sort of machine for observing facts and grinding out conclusions.

For I am well aware that scarcely a single point is discussed in this volume on which facts cannot be adduced, often apparently leading to conclusions directly opposite to those at which I arrived.

I must begin with a good body of facts and not from a principle (in which I always suspect some fallacy) and then as much deduction as you please.

I have steadily endeavoured to keep my mind free so as to give up any hypothesis, however much beloved (and I cannot resist forming one on every subject), as soon as facts are shown to be opposed to it.

If the misery of the poor be caused not by the laws of nature, but by our institutions, great is our sin.