Inspirational Quotations

Inspirational Quotes by Joseph Priestley (English Clergyman, Scientist)

Joseph Priestley (1733–1804) was an English clergyman, political theorist, chemist, and author of 150 books, generally theological or educational. His major work was on the chemistry of gases, in which his most notable discovery was of oxygen (“dephlogisticated air”) in 1774.

Born in Fieldhead, Leeds, Priestley spent four years at a dissenting academy in Daventry and, in 1755, became minister at Needham Market and wrote The Scripture Doctrine of Remission. In 1758, he went to Nantwich, Cheshire, and in 1761 became a tutor at Warrington Academy, a pre-eminent dissenting academy. During visits to London, he met Benjamin Franklin, who supplied Priestley with books for his History of Electricity (1767.)

In 1767 Priestley became minister of a chapel at Mill Hill, Leeds, where he studied chemistry. Living next door to a brewery, he became interested in gases. By 1772, he had identified carbon dioxide and nitrous oxide.

In 1774, Priestley transformed chemistry by isolating oxygen and seven other gases, proving that air was not a single substance but a combination of gases, each with its distinct characteristics. Priestley also demonstrated that oxygen was essential to animal life and that plants give it off in the sunlight. (The Swedish chemist Carl Wilhelm Scheele also discovered oxygen independently but concurrently.)

In 1774, Priestley accompanied Lord Shelburne as a literary companion on a continental tour and published Letters to a Philosophical Unbeliever. However, he was branded an atheist at home regardless of his Disquisition Relating to Matter and Spirit (1777,) affirming hope of resurrection from revelation.

Priestley was elected to the French Academy of Sciences in 1772, to the St. Petersburg Academy in 1780, and became minister of a chapel in Birmingham. His History of Early Opinions Concerning Jesus Christ (1786) caused renewed controversy—in 1791, after he replied to Edmund Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France, Priestley’s home was mobbed and destroyed. He then settled in Hackney, London, and in 1794 moved to the U.S.; he was well received there and died in Northumberland, Pennsylvania.

Royal Institute of Chemistry-London’s Frederick William Gibbs wrote Joseph Priestley: Adventurer in Science and Champion of Truth (1965.)

More: Wikipedia READ: Works by Joseph Priestley

As the greatest things often take their rise from the smallest beginnings, so the worst things sometimes proceed from good intentions.
Joseph Priestley

The mind of man will never be able to contemplate the being, perfections, and providence of God without meeting with inexplicable difficulties.
Joseph Priestley

The mind of man can never be wholly barren. Through our whole lives we are subject to successive impressions; for, either new ideas are continually flowing in, or traces of the old ones are marked deeper.
Joseph Priestley

It is the earnest wish of my heart, that your minds may be well established in the sound principles of religious knowledge, because I am fully persuaded, that nothing else can be a sufficient foundation of a virtuous and truly respectable conduct in life, or of good hope in death.
Joseph Priestley

We more easily give our assent to any proposition when the person who contends for it appears, by his manner of delivering himself, to have a perfect knowledge of the subject of it.
Joseph Priestley

If the exertion of human abilities, which cannot but form a delightful spectacle for the human imagination, give us pleasure, we enjoy it here in a higher degree than while we are contemplating the schemes of warriors, and the stratagems of their bloody art.
Joseph Priestley

Wondering Whom to Read Next?

Comments

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *