Thomas Huxley Quotes | GloryQuotes

Thomas Huxley Quotes About Science

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

No delusion is greater than the notion that method and industry can make up for lack of mother-wit, either in science or in practical life.

Books are the money of Literature, but only the counters of Science.

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

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

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

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

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

Thomas Huxley Quotes About Wisdom

Teach a child what is wise, that is morality. Teach him what is wise and beautiful, that is religion!

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 world is neither wise nor just, but it makes up for all its folly and injustice by being damnably sentimental.

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

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.

The only medicine for suffering, crime, and all other woes of mankind, is wisdom. Teach a man to read and write, and you have put into his hands the great keys of the wisdom box. But it is quite another thing to open the box.

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.

More Quotes by Thomas Huxley

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

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

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

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

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

Surely there is a time to submit to guidance and a time to take one's own way at all hazards.

Of moral purpose I see no trace in Nature. That is an article of exclusively human manufacture and very much to our credit.

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

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

The best men of the best epochs are simply those who make the fewest blunders and commit the fewest sins.

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

History warns us that it is the customary fate of new truths to begin as heresies and to end as superstitions.

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

The doctrine that all men are, in any sense, or have been, at any time, free and equal, is an utterly baseless fiction.

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 the greatest practical benefit in making a few failures early in life.

No slavery can be abolished without a double emancipation, and the master will benefit by freedom more than the freed-man.

It is the customary fate of new truths, to begin as heresies, and to end as superstitions.

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

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

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

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

Ecclesiasticism in science is only unfaithfulness to truth.

The scientific imagination always restrains itself within the limits of probability.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Science is nothing, but trained and organized common sense.

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

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.

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

Irrationally held truths may be more harmful than reasoned errors.

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

The most considerable difference I note among men is not in their readiness to fall into error, but in their readiness to acknowledge these inevitable lapses.

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

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.

It is because the body is a machine that education is possible. Education is the formation of habits, a superinducing of an artificial organization upon the natural organization of the body.

Science commits suicide when it adopts a creed.

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.

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.

The child who has been taught to make an accurate elevation, plan, and section of a pint pot has had an admirable training in accuracy of eye and hand.

It is one of the most saddening things in life that, try as we may, we can never be certain of making people happy, whereas we can almost always be certain of making them unhappy.

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.

Browse 73 quotes attributed to Thomas Huxley, listed in the source data as a English Scientist, organized around themes such as Science, Wisdom, Honesty. Use the topic links to explore similar quotes, or browse the full author collection in one place.