Thomas Huxley Quotes

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

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

"Patience and tenacity are worth more than twice their weight of cleverness."

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

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

"The known is finite, the unknown infinite; intellectually we stand on an islet in the midst of an illimitable ocean of inexplicability. Our business in every generation is to reclaim a little more land, to add something to the extent and the solidity of our possessions."

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

"The rung of a ladder was never meant to rest upon, but only to hold a man's foot long enough to enable him to put the other somewhat higher."

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

"The great thing in the world is not so much to seek happiness as to earn peace and self-respect."

"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."

"Learn what is true in order to do what is right."

"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."

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

"Science and literature are not two things, but two sides of one thing."

"Science commits suicide when it adopts a creed."

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

"Science is nothing, but trained and organized common sense."

"Nothing can be more incorrect than the assumption one sometimes meets with, that physics has one method, chemistry another, and biology a third."

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

"Science is organized common sense where many a beautiful theory was killed by an ugly fact."

"It is not to be forgotten that what we call rational grounds for our beliefs are often extremely irrational attempts to justify our instincts."

"All truth, in the long run, is only common sense clarified."

"Economy does not lie in sparing money, but in spending it wisely."

"The only question which any wise man can ask himself, and which any honest man will ask himself, is whether a doctrine is true or false."

"Proclaim human equality as loudly as you like, Witless will serve his brother."

"The more rapidly truth is spread among mankind the better it will be for them. Only let us be sure that it is the truth."

"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."

"Size is not grandeur, and territory does not make a nation."

"The Bible has been the Magna Carta of the poor and of the oppressed."