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

Thomas Huxley

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Thomas Huxley
Age: 70 †
Born: 1825
Born: May 4
Died: 1895
Died: June 29
Anatomist
Anthropologist
Biologist
Carcinologist
Ichthyologist
Linguist
Naturalist
Paleontologist
Philosopher
Photographer
Physiologist
Lexington
Kentucky
T. H. Huxley
Huxley
Beauty
Fact
Slaying
Science
Hypothesis
Facts
Physics
Beautiful
Scientist
Great
Tragedy
Ugly
Education

More quotes by Thomas Huxley

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If a man cannot see a church, it is preposterous to take his opinion about its altar-piece or painted window.
Thomas Huxley
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[Scientists] have learned to respect nothing but evidence, and to believe that their highest duty lies in submitting to it however it may jar against their inclinations.
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The only good that I can see in the demonstration of the truth of Spiritualism is to furnish an additional argument against suicide. Better live a crossing-sweeper than die and be made to talk twaddle by a medium hired at a guinea a séance.
Thomas Huxley
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The student of Nature wonders the more and is astonished the less, the more conversant he becomes with her operations but of all the perennial miracles she offers to his inspection, perhaps the most worthy of admiration is the development of a plant or of an animal from its embryo.
Thomas Huxley
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Science and literature are not two things, but two sides of one thing.
Thomas Huxley
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Material advancement has its share in moral and intellectual progress. Becky Sharp's acute remark that it is not difficult to be virtuous on ten thousand a year has its applications to nations and it is futile to expect a hungry and squalid population to be anything but violent and gross.
Thomas Huxley
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I doubt the fact, to begin with, but if it be so even, what is this but in grand words asking me to believe a thing because I like it.
Thomas Huxley
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If the twentieth century is to be better than the nineteenth, it will be because there are among us men who walk in Priestley's footsteps....To all eternity, the sum of truth and right will have been increased by their means to all eternity, falsehoods and injustice will be the weaker because they have lived.
Thomas Huxley
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The saying that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing is, to my mind, a very dangerous adage. If knowledge is real and genuine, I do not believe that it is other than a very valuable posession, however infinitesimal its quantity may be. Indeed, if a little knowledge is dangerous, where is a man who has so much as to be out of danger?
Thomas Huxley
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A drop of water is as powerful as a thunder-bolt.
Thomas Huxley
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Every living creature commences its existence under a form different from, and simpler than, that which it eventually attains.
Thomas Huxley
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Science is simply common sense at its best.
Thomas Huxley
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There is the greatest practical benefit in making a few failures early in life.
Thomas Huxley
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Teach a child what is wise, that is morality. Teach him what is wise and beautiful, that is religion!
Thomas Huxley
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If individuality has no play, society does not advance if individuality breaks out of all bounds, society perishes.
Thomas Huxley
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That which lies before the human race is a constant struggle to maintain and improve, in opposition to State of Nature, the State of Art of an organized polity in which, and by which, man may develop a worthy civilization
Thomas Huxley
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I have never been able to understand why pigeon-shooting at Hurlingham should be refined and polite, while a rat-killing match in Whitechapel is low.
Thomas Huxley
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The best men of the best epochs are simply those who make the fewest blunders and commit the fewest sins.
Thomas Huxley
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I cannot say that I am in the slightest degree impressed by your bigness, or your material resources, as such. Size is not grandeur, and territory does not make a nation. The great issue, about which hangs true sublimity, and the terror of overhanging fate, is what are you going to do with all these things?
Thomas Huxley
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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.
Thomas Huxley