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My experience of the world is that things left to themselves don't get right.

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
Things
World
Experience
Left
Right

More quotes by Thomas Huxley

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There is the greatest practical benefit in making a few failures early in life.
Thomas Huxley
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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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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.
Thomas Huxley
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In scientific work, those who refuse to go beyond fact rarely get as far as fact.
Thomas Huxley
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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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Genius, as an explosive power, beats gunpowder hollow.
Thomas Huxley
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The dogma of the infallibility of the Bible is no more self-evident than is that of the infallibility of the popes.
Thomas Huxley
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I doubt the fact, to begin with, but if it be so even, what is this but in grand words asking me to believe a thing because I like it.
Thomas Huxley
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There are savages without God in any proper sense of the word, but none without ghosts.
Thomas Huxley
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Sit down before fact as a little child, be prepared to give up every conceived notion, follow humbly wherever and whatever abysses nature leads, or you will learn nothing.
Thomas Huxley
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The rung of a ladder was never meant to rest upon.
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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If individuality has no play, society does not advance if individuality breaks out of all bounds, society perishes.
Thomas Huxley
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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.
Thomas Huxley
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It is better to read a little and thoroughly than cram a crude undigested mass into my head, though it be great in quantity.
Thomas Huxley
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Perhaps the most valuable result of all education is the ability to make yourself do the thing you have to do, when it ought to be done, whether you like it or not. It is the first lesson that ought to be learned and however early a man's training begins, it is probably the last lesson that he learns thoroughly.
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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Not far from the invention of fire we must rank the invention of doubt.
Thomas Huxley
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Science has fulfilled her function when she has ascertained and enunciated truth.
Thomas Huxley
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A well-worn adage advises those who set out upon a great enterprise to count the cost, yet some of the greatest enterprises have succeeded because the people who undertook them did not count the cost.
Thomas Huxley