T. H. Huxley Quotes

The more you know, the more you see

The gods are just. No doubt. But their code of law is dictated, in the last resort, by the people who organize society; Providence takes its cue from men.

The snapshots had become almost as dim as memories.

Most of one's life is one prolonged effort to prevent oneself thinking.

Every idol, however exalted, turns out, in the long run, to be a Moloch, hungry for human sacrifice.

I like being myself. Myself and nasty.

Maybe this world is another planet's Hell.

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

Sleep is the most blessed and blessing of all natural graces.

I'd rather be myself," he said. "Myself and nasty. Not somebody else, however jolly.

To be a fool at the right time is also an art.

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.

Europe is so well gardened that it resembles a work of art, a scientific theory, a neat metaphysical system. Man has re-created Europe in his own image.

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

But the quiet grows and grows. Beautifully and unbearably.

Defined in psychological terms, a fanatic is a man who consciously over-compensates a secret doubt.

People are much too solemn about things - I'm all for sticking pins into episcopal behinds.

People will insist on treating the mons Veneris as though it were Mount Everest. Too silly!

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

Every ceiling, when reached, becomes a floor, upon which one walks as a matter of course and prescriptive 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.

It is easier to believe that there was nothing before there was something than that there was something before there was nothing.

Cynical realism is the intelligent man's best excuse for doing nothing in an intolerable situation.

The art of living is simply the art of using energy in an intelligent and creative way.

Civilization is sterilization.

A large city cannot be experientially known; its life is too manifold for any individual to be able to participate in it.

If you have behaved badly, repent, make what amends you can and address yourself to the task of behaving better next time.

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

The vast majority of human beings are not interested in reason or satisfied with what it teaches.

An irrelevance, and your life's altered.

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

Universal education has created an immense class of what I may call the New Stupid, hungering for certainty yet unable to find it in the traditional myths and their rationalizations.

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.

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

Science commits suicide when it adopts a creed.

Happiness is a hard master, particularly other people's happiness.

Time, whose tooth gnaws away everything else, is powerless against truth.

Several excuses are always less convincing than one.

Assembled in a crowd, people lose their powers of reasoning and their capacity for moral choice.

Every ceiling reached becomes a floor.

You should hurry up and acquire the cigar habit. It's one of the major happinesses. And so much more lasting than love, so much less costly in emotional wear and tear.

We objected to the morality because it interfered with our sexual freedom.

To see ourselves as others see us is a most salutary gift. Hardly less important is the capacity to see others as they see themselves.

Peace is a necessary condition of spirituality, no less than an inevitable result of it.

Hell isn't merely paved with good intentions; it's walled and roofed with them. Yes, and furnished too.

Experience is not what happens to a man; it is what a man does with what happens to him. It is a gift for dealing with the accidents of existence, not the accidents themselves.

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

The results of political changes are hardly ever those which their friends hope or their foes fear.

What man has joined, nature is powerless to put asunder.

The optimum population is modeled on the iceberg- eight-ninths below the water line, one-ninth above.