Quotes By Thomas Huxley

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

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

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

Irrationally held truths may be more harmful than reasoned errors.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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 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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

Freedom and order are not incompatible... truth is strength... free discussion is the very life of truth.

Try to learn something about everything and everything about something.

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.

I took thought, and invented what I conceived to be the appropriate title of 'agnostic'.

My experience of the world is that things left to themselves don't get right.

In science, as in art, and, as I believe, in every other sphere of human activity, there may be wisdom in a multitude of counsellors, but it is only in one or two of them.

I am content with nothing, restless and ambitious... and I despise myself for the vanity, which formed half the stimulus to my exertions. Oh would that I were one of those plodding wise fools who having once set their hand to the plough go on nothing doubting.