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. . . I fail to find a trace [in Protestantism] of any desire to set reason free. The most that can be discovered is a proposal to change masters. From being a slave of the papacy, the intellect was to become the serf of the Bible.

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
Failing
Proposal
Free
Trace
Religion
Discovered
Desire
Intellect
Become
Fail
Serf
Change
Slave
Papacy
Reason
Bible
Serfs
Find
Masters
Protestantism

More quotes by Thomas Huxley

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The secret of genius is to carry the spirit of childhood into maturity.
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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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Teach a child what is wise, that is morality. Teach him what is wise and beautiful, that is religion!
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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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I'd rather have an ape for an ancestor than a bishop.
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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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In the world of letters, learning and knowledge are one, and books are the source of both whereas in science, as in life, learning and knowledge are distinct, and the study of things, and not of books, is the source of the latter.
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The known is finite, the unknown infinite intellectually we stand on an islet in the midst of an illimitable ocean of inexplicability. Our business in every generation is to reclaim a little more land, to add something to the extent and the solidity of our possessions.
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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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Genius as an explosive power beats gunpowder hollow and if knowledge, which should give that power guidance, is wanting, the chances are not small that the rocket will simply run amuck among friends and foes.
Thomas Huxley
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Science commits suicide when it adopts a creed.
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.
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Life is too short to occupy oneself with the slaying of the slain more than once.
Thomas Huxley
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The rung of a ladder was never meant to rest upon.
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
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Science is simply common sense at its best.
Thomas Huxley
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We are prone to see what lies behind our eyes, rather than what apprears before them.
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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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Ecclesiasticism in science is only unfaithfulness to truth
Thomas Huxley
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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