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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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Every living creature commences its existence under a form different from, and simpler than, that which it eventually attains.
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No man is any the worse off because another acquires wealth by trade, or by the exercise of a profession on the contrary, he cannot have acquired his wealth except by benefiting others to the extent of what they considered to be its value.
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In truth, the laboratory is the forecourt of the temple of philosophy, and whoso has not offered sacrifices and undergone purification there has little chance of admission into the sanctuary.
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There are savages without God in any proper sense of the word, but none without ghosts.
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Science is simply common sense at its best, that is, rigidly accurate in observation, and merciless to fallacy in logic.
Thomas Huxley
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Life is too short to occupy oneself with the slaying of the slain more than once.
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It is a popular delusion that the scientific enquirer is under an obligation not to go beyond generalisation of observed facts...but anyone who is practically acquainted with scientific work is aware that those who refuse to go beyond the facts, rarely get as far.
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And when you cannot prove that people are wrong, but only that they are absurd, the best course is to let them alone.
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People never will recollect that mere learning and mere cleverness are of next to no value in life, while energy and intellectual grip, the things that are inborn and cannot be taught, are everything.
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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.
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Science is organized common sense where many a beautiful theory was killed by an ugly fact.
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The only people, scientific or other, who never make mistakes are those who do nothing.
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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.
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Agnosticism simply means that a man shall not say that he knows or believes that for which he has no grounds for professing to believe.
Thomas Huxley
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To quarrel with the uncertainty that besets us in intellectual affairs would be about as reasonable as to object to live one's life with due thought for the morrow because no man can be sure he will alive an hour hence.
Thomas Huxley
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There is no greater mistake than the hasty conclusion that opinions are worthless because they are badly argued.
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If then, said I, the question is put to me would I rather have a miserable ape for a grandfather or a man highly endowed by nature and possessing great means and influence and yet who employs those faculties for the mere purpose of introducing ridicule into a grave scientific discussion-I unhesitatingly affirm my preference for the ape.
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Every great advance in natural knowledge has involved the absolute rejection of authority.
Thomas Huxley
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Creation,' in the ordinary sense of the word, is perfectly conceivable. I find no difficulty in conceiving that, at some former period, this universe was not in existence, and that it made its appearance in six days (or instantaneously, if that is preferred), in consequence of the volition of some preexisting Being.
Thomas Huxley
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The rung of a ladder was never meant to rest upon.
Thomas Huxley