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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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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
Question
Honest
Wise
Asks
Whether
True
Men
Doctrine
False

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The results of political changes are hardly ever those which their friends hope or their foes fear.
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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.
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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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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.
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Nothing great in science has ever been done by men, whatever their powers, in whom the divine afflatus of the truth-seeker was wanting.
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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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It may be well to remember that the highest level of moral aspiration recorded in history was reached by a few ancient Jews--Micah, Isaiah, and the rest--who took no count whatever of what might not happen to them after death. It is not obvious to me why the same point should not by and by be reached by the Gentiles.
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The ultimate court of appeal is observation and experiment... not authority.
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My experience of the world is that things left to themselves don't get right.
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There is no sea more dangerous than the ocean of practical politics none in which there is more need of good pilotage and of a single, unfaltering purpose when the waves rise high.
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No mistake is so commonly made by clever people as that of assuming a cause to be bad because the arguments of its supporters are, to a great extent, nonsensical
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If a man cannot do brain work without stimulants of any kind, he had better turn to hand work it is an indication on Nature's part that she did not mean him to be a head worker.
Thomas Huxley
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It is far better for a man to go wrong in freedom than to go right in chains.
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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The great thing in the world is not so much to seek happiness as to earn peace and self-respect.
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A man who speaks out honestly and fearlessly that which he knows, and that which he believes, will always enlist the good will and the respect, however much he may fail in winning the assent, of his fellow men.
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.
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Thoughtfulness for others, generosity, modesty, and self-respect are the qualities which make a real gentleman or lady.
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Science is nothing, but trained and organized common sense.
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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.
Thomas Huxley