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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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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
Commit
Sin
Simply
Best
Make
Epochs
Men
Fewest
Blunders
Sins

More quotes by Thomas Huxley

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Surely there is a time to submit to guidance and a time to take one's own way at all hazards.
Thomas Huxley
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My reflection, when I first made myself master of the central idea of the 'Origin', was, 'How extremely stupid not to have thought of that!'
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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As a natural process, of the same character as the development of a tree from its seed, or of a fowl from its egg, evolution excludes creation and all other kinds of supernatural intervention.
Thomas Huxley
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Social progress means a checking of the cosmic process at every step and the substitution for it of another, which may be called the ethical process the end of which is not the survival of those who may happen to be the fittest, in respect of the whole of the conditions which obtain, but of those who are ethically the best.
Thomas Huxley
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No slavery can be abolished without a double emancipation, and the master will benefit by freedom more than the freed-man.
Thomas Huxley
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Only one absolute certainty is possible to man, namely that at any given moment the feeling which he has exists.
Thomas Huxley
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There is no sadder sight in the world than to see a beautiful theory killed by a brutal fact.
Thomas Huxley
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To say that an idea is necessary is simply to affirm that we cannot conceive the contrary and the fact that we cannot conceive the contrary of any belief may be a presumption, but is certainly no proof, of its truth.
Thomas Huxley
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The very existence of society depends on the fact that every member of it tacitly admits he is not the exclusive possessor of himself, and that he admits the claim of the polity of which he forms a part, to act, to some extent, as his master.
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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A world of facts lies outside and beyond the world of words.
Thomas Huxley
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God give me strength to face a fact though it slay me.
Thomas Huxley
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There is no alleviation for the sufferings of mankind except veracity of thought and of action, and the resolute facing of the world as it is when the garment of make-believe by which pious hands have hidden its uglier features is stripped off.
Thomas Huxley
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The only people, scientific or other, who never make mistakes are those who do nothing.
Thomas Huxley
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It is an error to imagine that evolution signifies a constant tendency to increased perfection. That process undoubtedly involves a constant remodeling of the organism in adaptation to new conditions but it depends on the nature of those conditions whether the direction of the modifications effected shall be upward or downward.
Thomas Huxley
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I wish you would let an old man, who has had his share of fighting, remind you that battles, like hypotheses, are not to be multiplied beyond necessity.
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
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Not far from the invention of fire we must rank the invention of doubt.
Thomas Huxley
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Tolerably early in life I discovered that one of the unpardonable sins, in the eyes of most people, is for a man to go about unlabeled. The world regards such a person as the police do an unmuzzled dog.
Thomas Huxley