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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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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
Enough
Atheism
Qualities
Believe
Mankind
Obstacles
Progress
Deeds
Ought
Honestly
Disbelieves
Quite
Honesty
Unpleasant
Quality
Painful
Obstacle
Word
Valuable
Deed
Religion
Constantly
Believes

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The more rapidly truth is spread among mankind the better it will be for them. Only let us be sure that it is the truth.
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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.
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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 reckons many prophets, but there is not even a promise of a Messiah.
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It sounds paradoxical to say the attainment of scientific truth has been effected, to a great extent, by the help of scientific errors.
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Of the few innocent pleasures left to men past middle life, the jamming of common sense down the throats of fools is perhaps the keenest.
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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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What men of science want is only a fair day's wages for more than a fair day's work.
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I have no faith, very little hope, and as much charity as I can afford.
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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.
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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 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.
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Veracity is the heart of morality.
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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.
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The struggle for existence holds as much in the intellectual as in the physical world. A theory is a species of thinking, and its right to exist is coextensive with its power of resisting extinction by its rivals.
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In scientific work, those who refuse to go beyond fact rarely get as far as fact.
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Deduction, which takes us from the general proposition to facts again-teaches us, if I may so say, to anticipate from the ticket what is inside the bundle.
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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.
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If individuality has no play, society does not advance if individuality breaks out of all bounds, society perishes.
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Life is too short to occupy oneself with the slaying of the slain more than once.
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