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

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
Experiments
Court
Ultimate
Authority
Rationality
Thinking
Appeal
Experiment
Appeals
Observation

More quotes by Thomas Huxley

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Unfortunately, it is much easier to shut one's eyes to good than to evil. Pain and sorrow knock at our doors more loudly than pleasure and happiness and the prints of their heavy footsteps are less easily effaced.
Thomas Huxley
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Whatever part of the animal fabric whatever series of muscles, whatever viscera might be selected for comparison the result would be the same the lower Apes and the Gorilla would differ more than the Gorilla and the Man.
Thomas Huxley
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The great thing in the world is not so much to seek happiness as to earn peace and self-respect.
Thomas Huxley
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Logical consequences are the scarecrows of fools and the beacons of wise men.
Thomas Huxley
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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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There are savages without God in any proper sense of the word, but none without ghosts.
Thomas Huxley
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We live in the hope and faith that, by the advance of molecular physics, we shall by-and-by be able to see our way as clearly from the constituents of water to the properties of water, as we are now able to deduce the operations of a watch from the form of its parts and the manner in which they are put together.
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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Science commits suicide when it adopts a creed.
Thomas Huxley
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Books are the money of Literature, but only the counters of Science.
Thomas Huxley
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The scientific imagination always restrains itself within the limits of probability.
Thomas Huxley
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The known is finite, the unknown infinite spiritually we find ourselves on a tiny island in the middle of a boundless ocean of the inexplicable. It is our task, from generation to generation, to drain a small amount of additional land.
Thomas Huxley
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It ought not to be unpleasant to say that which one honestly believes or disbelieves. That it so constantly is painful to do so, is quite enough obstacle to the progress of mankind in that most valuable of all qualities, honesty of word or of deed.
Thomas Huxley
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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.
Thomas Huxley
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Fact I know and Law I know but what is this Necessity, save an empty shadow of my own mind's throwing?
Thomas Huxley
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Science is nothing, but trained and organized common sense.
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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Let us have sweet girl graduates by all means. They will be none the less sweet for a little wisdom and the golden hair will not curl less gracefully outside the head by reason of there being brains within.
Thomas Huxley
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The doctrine that all men are, in any sense, or have been, at any time, free and equal, is an utterly baseless fiction.
Thomas Huxley
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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.
Thomas Huxley