Thomas Huxley Quotes

The great tragedy of science - the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact.

Only one absolute certainty is possible to man,
namely that at any given moment the feeling which he has exists.

Try to learn something about everything and everything about something.

The Bible has been the Magna Charta of the poor and of the oppressed.

If a little knowledge is dangerous,
where is the man who has so much as to be out of danger?

It is not who is right,
but what is right,
that is of importance.

Thoughtfulness for others,
generosity,
modesty,
and self-respect are the qualities which make a real gentleman or lady.

The man of science has learned to believe in justification,
not by faith,
but by verification.

God give me strength to face a fact though it slay me.

I am content with nothing,
restless and ambitious...
and I despise myself for the vanity,
which formed half the stimulus to my exertions.
Oh would that I were one of those plodding wise fools who having once set their hand to the plough go on nothing doubting.

Science is nothing but trained and organized common sense differing from the latter only as a veteran may differ from a raw recruit: and its methods differ from those of common sense only as far as the guardsman's cut and thrust differ from the manner in which a savage wields his club.

Let us have "sweet girl graduates" by all means.
They will be none the less sweet for a little wisdom;
and the "golden hair" will not curl less gracefully outside the head by reason of there being brains within.

Life is too short to occupy oneself with the slaying of the slain more than once.

The secret of genius is to carry the spirit of childhood into maturity.

Make up your mind to act decidedly and take the consequences.
No good is ever done in this world by hesitation.

Science is simply common sense at its best.

The rules of the game are what we call the laws of nature.

A drop of water is as powerful as a thunder-bolt.

Science is simply common sense at its best,
that is,
rigidly accurate in observation,
and merciless to fallacy in logic.

Perhaps the most valuable result of all education is the ability to make yourself do the thing you have to do,
when it ought to be done,
whether you like it or not.
It is the first lesson that ought to be learned and however early a man's training begins,
it is probably the last lesson that he learns thoroughly.

The foundation of all morality is to have done,
once and for all,
with lying;
to give up pretending to believe that for which there is no evidence,
and repeating unintelligible propositions about things beyond the possibilities of knowledge.

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.

Ecclesiasticism in science is only unfaithfulness to truth

Genius,
as an explosive power,
beats gunpowder hollow.

My business is to teach my aspirations to confirm themselves to fact,
not to try and make facts harmonize with my aspirations.

And you very soon find out,
if you have not found it out before,
that patience and tenacity of purpose are worth more than twice their weight of cleverness.

Logical consequences are the scarecrows of fools and the beacons of wise men.

Surely there is a time to submit to guidance and a time to take one's own way at all hazards.

What would become of the garden if the gardener treated all the weeds and slugs and birds and trespassers as he would like to be treated,
if he were in their place?

There is assuredly no more effectual method of clearing up one's own mind on any subject than by talking it over,
so to speak,
with men of real power and grasp,
who have considered it from a totally different point of view.

If there is anything in the world which I do firmly believe in,
it is the universal validity of the law of causation.

'Infidel' is a term of reproach,
which Christians and Mohammedans,
in their modesty,
agree to apply to those who differ from them.

A world of facts lies outside and beyond the world of words.

For these two years I have been gravitating towards your doctrines,
and since the publication of your primula paper with accelerated velocity.
By about this time next year I expect to have shot past you,
and to find you pitching into me for being more Darwinian than yourself.
However,
you have set me going,
and must just take the consequences,
for I warn you I will stop at no point so long as clear reasoning will take me further.

It is wrong for a man to say that he is certain of the objective truth of any proposition unless he can produce evidence which logically justifies that certainty.

The great end of life is not knowledge but action.

Mathematics may be compared to a mill of exquisite workmanship,
which grinds you stuff of any degree of fineness;
but,
nevertheless,
what you get out depends upon what you put in;
and as the grandest mill in the world will not extract wheat-flour from peascods,
so pages of formulae will not get a definite result out of loose data.

I hated tobacco.
I could have almost lent my support to any institution that had for its object the putting of tobacco smokers to death...I now feel that smoking in moderation is a comfortable and laudable practice,
and is productive of good.
There is no more harm in a pipe than in a cup of tea.
You may poison yourself by drinking too much green tea,
and kill yourself by eating too many beefsteaks.
For my part,
I consider that tobacco,
in moderation,
is a sweetener and equalizer of the temper.

Mathematics may be compared to a mill of exquisite workmanship,
which grinds your stuff to any degree of fineness.

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 science,
the art,
the jurisprudence,
the chief political and social theories,
of the modern world have grown out of Greece and Rome-not by favour of,
but in the teeth of,
the fundamental teachings of early Christianity,
to which science,
art,
and any serious occupation with the things of this world were alike despicable.

Skepticism is the highest duty and blind faith the one unpardonable sin.

The ultimate court of appeal is observation and experiment...
not authority.

Without seeing any reason to believe that women are,
on the average,
so strong physically,
intellectually,
or morally,
as men,
I cannot shut my eyes to the fact that many women are much better endowed in all these respects than many men,
and I am at a loss to understand on what grounds of justice or public policy a career which is open to the weakest and most foolish of the male sex should be forcibly closed to women of vigor and capacity.

When I reached intellectual maturity and began to ask myself whether I was an atheist,
a theist,
or a pantheist;
a materialist,
or an idealist;
a Christian,
or a freethinker;
I found that the more I learned and reflected,
the less ready was the answer;
until,
at last,
I came to the conclusion that I had neither art nor part with any of these denominations,
except the last.

There is the greatest practical benefit in making a few failures early in life.

Men can intoxicate themselves with ideas as effectually as with alcohol or with bang and produce,
be dint of serious thinking,
mental conditions hardly distinguishable from monomania.

Science commits suicide when it adopts a creed.

It is far better for a man to go wrong in freedom than to go right in chains.

It is not what we believe,
but why we believe it.
Moral responsibility lies in diligently weighing the evidence.
We must actively doubt;
we have to scrutinize our views,
not take them on trust.
No virtue attached to blindly accepting orthodoxy,
however 'venerable'.