Thomas H. Huxley (1825-1895)

Quotes

• Science comits suicide when it adopts a creed.

• Agnosticism simply means that a man shall not say he knows or believes that for which he has no grounds for professing to believe.

• Every great advance in natural knowledge has involved the absolute rejection of authority.

• Irrationally held truths may be more harmful than reasoned errors.

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

• Science ... warns me to be careful how I adopt a view which jumps with my preconceptions, and to require stronger evidence for such belief than for one to which I was previously hostile. My business is to teach my aspirations to conform themselves to fact, not to try and make facts harmonize with my aspirations.

• 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.

• I have no faith, very little hope, and as much charity as I can afford.

• Sit down before fact as a little child, be prepared to give up every preconceived notion... or you shall learn nothing.

• A man's worst difficulties begin when he is able to do as he likes.

• Try to learn something about everything and everything about something.

• The strongest man in the world is the man who stands alone.

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

• 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.

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

• The great end of life is not knowledge but action.

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

• Science is nothing but trained and organized common sense.

• The world makes up for all its follies and injustices by being damnably sentimental.

• 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.