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The foundation of all morality is to have done, once and for all, with lying to give up pretending to believe that for which there is no evidence, and repeating unintelligible propositions about things beyond the possibilities of knowledge.

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
Possibility
Unintelligible
Beyond
Repeating
Knowledge
Propositions
Lying
Pretending
Give
Possibilities
Done
Morality
Giving
Foundation
Believe
Evidence

More quotes by Thomas Huxley

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That which endures is not one or another association of living forms, but the process of which the cosmos is the product, and of which these are among the transitory expressions.
Thomas Huxley
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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.
Thomas Huxley
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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.
Thomas Huxley
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For myself I say deliberately, it is better to have a millstone tied round the neck and be thrown into the sea than to share the enterprises of those to whom the world has turned, and will turn, because they minister to its weaknesses and cover up the awful realities which it shudders to look at.
Thomas Huxley
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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.
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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There is no sadder sight in the world than to see a beautiful theory killed by a brutal fact.
Thomas Huxley
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No delusion is greater than the notion that method and industry can make up for lack of mother-wit, either in science or in practical life.
Thomas Huxley
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Though under-instruction is a bad thing, it is not impossible that over-instruction may be worse.
Thomas Huxley
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There is far too much of the feeding-bottle in education and young people ought to be supplied with good intellectual food and then left to help themselves.
Thomas Huxley
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... our Physick and Anatomy have embraced such infinite varieties of being, have laid open such new worlds in time and space, have grappled, not unsuccessfully, with such complex problems, that the eyes of Vesalius and of Harvey might be dazzled by the sight of the tree that has grown out of their grain of mustard seed.
Thomas Huxley
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Mathematics may be compared to a mill of exquisite workmanship, which grinds your stuff to any degree of fineness.
Thomas Huxley
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Science is nothing, but trained and organized common sense.
Thomas Huxley
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The birth of science was the death of superstition.
Thomas Huxley
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The rules of the game are what we call the laws of nature.
Thomas Huxley
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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.
Thomas Huxley
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Not only do I disbelieve in the need for compensation, but I believe that the seeking for rewards and punishments out of this lifeleads men to a ruinous ignorance of the fact that their inevitable rewards and punishments are here.
Thomas Huxley
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History warns us that it is the customary fate of new truths to begin as heresies and to end as superstitions.
Thomas Huxley
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The scientific imagination always restrains itself within the limits of probability.
Thomas Huxley