To expect the world to receive a new truth, or even an old truth, without challenging it, is to look for one of those miracles which do not occur.
Alfred Russel Wallace

To the mass of mankind religion of some kind is a necessity.
Alfred Russel Wallace

I spent, as you know, a year and a half in a clergyman's family and heard almost every Tuesday the very best, most earnest and most impressive preacher it has ever been my fortune to meet with, but it produced no effect whatever on my mind.
Alfred Russel Wallace

The foregoing considerations lead us to the very important conclusion, that matter is essentially force, and nothing but force; that matter, as popularly understood, does not exist, and is, in fact, philosophically inconceivable.
Alfred Russel Wallace

It has been generally the custom of writers on natural history to take the habits and instincts of animals as the fixed point, and to consider their structure and organization as specially adapted to be in accordance with them.
Alfred Russel Wallace

I am decidedly of the opinion that in very many instances we can trace such a necessary connexion, especially among birds, and often with more complete success than in the case which I have here attempted to explain.
Alfred Russel Wallace

On the spiritual theory, man consists essentially of a spiritual nature or mind intimately associated with a spiritual body or soul, both of which are developed in and by means of a material organism.
Alfred Russel Wallace