Thomas Huxley
Scientist
1825-05-04
Quotes by Thomas Huxley
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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.
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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.
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It is the customary fate of new truths, to begin as heresies, and to end as superstitions.
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History warns us that it is the customary fate of new truths to begin as heresies and to end as superstitions.
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Of moral purpose I see no trace in Nature. That is an article of exclusively human manufacture and very much to our credit.
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Science is nothing, but trained and organized common sense.
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The great tragedy of science - the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact.
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I do not say think as I think, but think in my way. Fear no shadows, least of all in that great spectre of personal unhappiness which binds half the world to orthodoxy.
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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.
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The man of science has learned to believe in justification, not by faith, but by verification.
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Patience and tenacity are worth more than twice their weight of cleverness.
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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.
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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.
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