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Thomas Huxley Quotes

In science, as in art, and, as I believe, in every other sphere of human activity, there may be wisdom in a multitude of counsellors, but it is only in one or two of them.
Science is simply common sense at its best, that is, rigidly accurate in observation, and merciless to fallacy in logic.
The best men of the best epochs are simply those who make the fewest blunders and commit the fewest sins.
My business is to teach my aspirations to confirm themselves to fact, not to try and make facts harmonize with my aspirations.
It is because the body is a machine that education is possible. Education is the formation of habits, a superinducing of an artificial organization upon the natural organization of the body.
Proclaim human equality as loudly as you like, Witless will serve his brother.
My experience of the world is that things left to themselves don't get right.
The improver of natural knowledge absolutely refuses to acknowledge authority, as such. For him, skepticism is the highest of duties blind faith the one unpardonable sin.
The man of science has learned to believe in justification, not by faith, but by verification.
The results of political changes are hardly ever those which their friends hope or their foes fear.
I do not say think as I think, but think in my way. Fear no shadows, least of all in that great spectre of personal unhappiness which binds half the world to orthodoxy.
Freedom and order are not incompatible... truth is strength... free discussion is the very life of truth.
No slavery can be abolished without a double emancipation, and the master will benefit by freedom more than the freed-man.
The only freedom I care about is the freedom to do right the freedom to do wrong I am ready to part with on the cheapest terms to anyone who will take it of me.
Every great advance in natural knowledge has involved the absolute rejection of authority.
The great tragedy of science - the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact.
The great thing in the world is not so much to seek happiness as to earn peace and self-respect.
I protest that if some great Power would agree to make me always think what is true and do what is right, on condition of being turned into a sort of clock and would up every morning before I got out of bed, I should instantly close with the offer.
The great thing in the world is not so much to seek happiness as to earn peace and self-respect.
I take it that the good of mankind means the attainment, by every man, of all the happiness which he can enjoy without diminishing the happiness of his fellow men.
History warns us that it is the customary fate of new truths to begin as heresies and to end as superstitions.
I believe that history might be, and ought to be, taught in a new fashion so as to make the meaning of it as a process of evolution intelligible to the young.
The results of political changes are hardly ever those which their friends hope or their foes fear.
The scientific imagination always restrains itself within the limits of probability.
Every great advance in natural knowledge has involved the absolute rejection of authority.
If a little knowledge is dangerous, where is the man who has so much as to be out of danger?
The improver of natural knowledge absolutely refuses to acknowledge authority, as such. For him, skepticism is the highest of duties blind faith the one unpardonable sin.
The medieval university looked backwards it professed to be a storehouse of old knowledge. The modern university looks forward, and is a factory of new knowledge.
Try to learn something about everything and everything about something.
Economy does not lie in sparing money, but in spending it wisely.
Books are the money of Literature, but only the counters of Science.
I protest that if some great Power would agree to make me always think what is true and do what is right, on condition of being turned into a sort of clock and would up every morning before I got out of bed, I should instantly close with the offer.
The chess-board is the world, the pieces are the phenomena of the universe, the rules of the game are what we call the laws of Nature. The player on the other side is hidden from us.
Sit down before fact as a little child, be prepared to give up every conceived notion, follow humbly wherever and whatever abysses nature leads, or you will learn nothing.
Of moral purpose I see no trace in Nature. That is an article of exclusively human manufacture and very much to our credit.
If a man cannot do brain work without stimulants of any kind, he had better turn to hand work it is an indication on Nature's part that she did not mean him to be a head worker.
Patience and tenacity are worth more than twice their weight of cleverness.
The great thing in the world is not so much to seek happiness as to earn peace and self-respect.
There is no sea more dangerous than the ocean of practical politics none in which there is more need of good pilotage and of a single, unfaltering purpose when the waves rise high.
The struggle for existence holds as much in the intellectual as in the physical world. A theory is a species of thinking, and its right to exist is coextensive with its power of resisting extinction by its rivals.
I protest that if some great Power would agree to make me always think what is true and do what is right, on condition of being turned into a sort of clock and would up every morning before I got out of bed, I should instantly close with the offer.
Teach a child what is wise, that is morality. Teach him what is wise and beautiful, that is religion!
It is one of the most saddening things in life that, try as we may, we can never be certain of making people happy, whereas we can almost always be certain of making them unhappy.
Science is simply common sense at its best, that is, rigidly accurate in observation, and merciless to fallacy in logic.
The great tragedy of science - the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact.
Science is organized common sense where many a beautiful theory was killed by an ugly fact.
Science commits suicide when it adopts a creed.
Science is nothing, but trained and organized common sense.
Books are the money of Literature, but only the counters of Science.
The man of science has learned to believe in justification, not by faith, but by verification.