Quotes By Thomas Huxley

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

I take it that the good of mankind means the attainment, by every man, of all the happiness which he can enjoy without diminishing the happiness of his fellow men.

In scientific work, those who refuse to go beyond fact rarely get as far as fact.

There is but one right, and the possibilities of wrong are infinite.

Science commits suicide when it adopts a creed.

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

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

The scientific spirit is of more value than its products, and irrationally held truths may be more harmful than reasoned errors.

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

Irrationally held truths may be more harmful than reasoned errors.

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

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

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

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

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

Science reckons many prophets, but there is not even a promise of a Messiah.

The struggle for existence holds as much in the intellectual as in the physical world. A theory is a species of thinking, and its right to exist is coextensive with its power of resisting extinction by its rivals.

Misery is a match that never goes out.

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.

The medieval university looked backwards; it professed to be a storehouse of old knowledge. The modern university looks forward, and is a factory of new knowledge.

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.

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

I believe that history might be, and ought to be, taught in a new fashion so as to make the meaning of it as a process of evolution intelligible to the young.

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.

Science has fulfilled her function when she has ascertained and enunciated truth.

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.

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

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.