Thomas Huxley Quotes
Only one absolute certainty is possible to man, namely that at any given moment the feeling which he has exists.
If a little knowledge is dangerous, where is the man who has so much as to be out of danger?
Thoughtfulness for others, generosity, modesty, and self-respect are the qualities which make a real gentleman or lady.
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, that is, rigidly accurate in observation, and merciless to fallacy in logic.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
The results of political changes are hardly ever those which their friends hope or their foes fear.
It sounds paradoxical to say the attainment of scientific truth has been effected, to a great extent, by the help of scientific errors.
Science is organized common sense where many a beautiful theory was killed by an ugly fact.
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.
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.
Every great advance in natural knowledge has involved the absolute rejection of authority.
Freedom and order are not incompatible... truth is strength... free discussion is the very life of truth.
Teach a man to read and write, and you have put into his hands the great keys of the wisdom-box.
History warns us that it is the customary fate of new truths to begin as heresies and to end as superstitions.
