Luther Burbank > Quotes

“Flowers always make people better, happier, and more helpful; they are sunshine, food and medicine to the mind.”
― Luther Burbank

“Every child should have mud pies, grasshoppers, water bugs, tadpoles, frogs, mud turtles, elderberries, wild strawberries, acorns, chestnuts, trees to climb. Brooks to wade, water lilies, woodchucks, bats, bees, butterflies, various animals to pet, hayfields, pine-cones, rocks to roll, sand, snakes, huckleberries and hornets; and any child who has been deprived of these has been deprived of the best part of education.”
― Luther Burbank

“Listen patiently, quietly and reverently to the lessons, one by one, which Mother Nature has to teach, shedding light on that which was before a mystery, so that all who will, may see and know.”
― Luther Burbank

“It is well for people who think, to change their minds ocasionally in order to keep them clean.”
― Luther Burbank

“Those who would legislate against the teaching of evolution should also legislate against gravity, electricity and the unreasonable velocity of light, and also should introduce a clause to prevent the use of the telescope, the microscope and the spectroscope or any other instrument of precision which may in the future be invented, constructed or used for the discovery of truth.”
― Luther Burbank

“The chief trouble with religion has been too much dependence upon names or words. People fail to discriminate. They do not think. Generally people who think for themselves, instead of thinking according to the rules laid down by others, are considered unfaithful to the established order. In that respect I, too, differ with the established order and established designations.”
― Luther Burbank

“And to think of this great country in danger of being dominated by people ignorant enough to take a few ancient Babylonian legends as the canons of modern culture. Our scientific men are paying for their failure to speak out earlier. There is no use now talking evolution to these people. Their ears are stuffed with Genesis.”
― Luther Burbank

“Do not feed children on maudlin sentimentalism or dogmatic religion; give them nature.”
― Luther Burbank

“The integrity of one's own mind is of infinitely more value than adherence to any creed or system. We must choose between a dead faith belonging to the past and a living, growing ever-advancing science belonging to the future.”
― Luther Burbank

“The word 'religion' has acquired a very bad name among those who really love truth, justice, charity. It also exhales the musty odor of sanctimony and falsehood.”
― Luther Burbank

“I am an infidel today. I do not believe what has been served to me to believe. I am a doubter, a questioner, a skeptic. When it can be proved to me that there is immortality, that there is resurrection beyond the gates of death, then will I believe. Until then, no.”
― Luther Burbank

“I love humanity, which has been a constant delight to me during all my seventy-seven years of life; and I love flowers, trees, animals, and all the works of Nature as they pass before us in time and space. What a joy life is when you have made a close working partnership with Nature, helping her to produce for the benefit of mankind new forms, colors, and perfumes in flowers which were never known before; fruits in form, size, and flavor never before seen on this globe; and grains of enormously increased productiveness, whose fat kernels are filled with more and better nourishment, a veritable storehouse of perfect food—new food for all the world's untold millions for all time to come.”
― Luther Burbank

“Justice, love, truth, peace and harmony, a serene unity with science and the laws of the universe.”
― Luther Burbank

“A theory of personal resurrection or reincarnation of the individual is untenable when we but pause to consider the magnitude of the idea. On the contrary, I must believe that rather than the survival of all, we must look for survival only in the spirit of the good we have done in passing through.

Once obsolete, an automobile is thrown to the scrap heap. Once here and gone, the human life has likewise served its purpose. If it has been a good life, it has been sufficient. There is no need for another.”
― Luther Burbank

“Science... has opened our eyes to the vastness of the universe and given us light, truth and freedom from fear where once was darkness, ignorance and superstition. There is no personal salvation, except through science.”
― Luther Burbank, The Harvest of the Years

“Scientists gladly accept any new truth demonstrated by evidence, that is, proved by the very law of the cosmos. Not so with any new conceptions of religion; these are fought by the use of persecution and venom. Many of the current religious beliefs literally carried into practice would stampede humanity into the old jungle ideas and habits.”
― Luther Burbank

“Euripideslong ago said, 'who dares not speak his free thought is a slave.' I nominated myself as an 'infidel' as a challenge to thought for those who are asleep.”
― Luther Burbank

“We must learn that any person who will not accept what he knows to be truth for the very love of truth alone is very definitely undermining his mental integrity... you have not been a close observer of such men if you have not seen them shrivel, become commonplace, mean without influence, without friends, and without the enthusiasm of youth and growth, like a tree covered with fungus, the foliage deceased, the life gone out of the heart with dry rot and indelibly marked for destruction --- dead, but not yet handed over to the undertaker.”
― Luther Burbank

“Most people’s religion is what they want to believe, not what they do believe.”
― Luther Burbank

“The clear light of science teaches us that we must be our own saviors, if we are to be found worth saving.”
― Luther Burbank, The Harvest of the Years

“Science, which is only another name for truth, now holds religious charlatans, self-deceivers and God agents in a certain degree of check--agents and employees, I mean, of a mythical, medieval, man-made God, anthropomorphic in constitution.”
― Luther Burbank

“I do not think there is a person in this world who has been a more ardent admirer ofhimthan I have been.His life and work have been an inspiration to the whole earth, shedding light in the dark places which so sadly needed light.His memory calls forth my most sincere homage, love, and esteem.

{Burbank on the greatRobert Ingersoll,whom he admired so much that he requestedIngersoll's eulogy for his brother, Ebon Ingersoll, to be read at his own funeral}”
― Luther Burbank

“As a scientist, I can not help feeling that all religions are on a tottering foundation. None is perfect or inspired.

The idea that a good God would send people to a burning hell is utterly damnable to me. I don't want to have anything to do with such a God.”
― Luther Burbank

“Science, unlike theology, never leads to insanity.”
― Luther Burbank, The Harvest of the Years

“The scientist is a lover of truth for the very love of truth itself, wherever it may lead.”
― Luther Burbank

“I firmly believe, from what I have seen, that this is the chosen spot of all this earth as far as nature is concerned.”
― Luther Burbank

“The theory of Reincarnation, which originated in India, has been welcomed in other countries. Without doubt, it is one of the most sensible and satisfying of all religions that mankind has conceived.”
― Luther Burbank