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To say that an idea is necessary is simply to affirm that we cannot conceive the contrary and the fact that we cannot conceive the contrary of any belief may be a presumption, but is certainly no proof, of its truth.

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
Facts
Proof
Cannot
Contrary
Truth
Certainly
May
Necessary
Ideas
Simply
Belief
Affirm
Fact
Presumption
Idea
Conceive

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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.
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Whatever part of the animal fabric whatever series of muscles, whatever viscera might be selected for comparison the result would be the same the lower Apes and the Gorilla would differ more than the Gorilla and the Man.
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In matters of intellect, follow your reason as far as it will take you, without regard for any other consideration.
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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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The best men of the best epochs are simply those who make the fewest blunders and commit the fewest sins.
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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.
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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.
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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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It is the first duty of a hypothesis to be intelligible.
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Only one absolute certainty is possible to man, namely that at any given moment the feeling which he has exists.
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The foundation of morality is to have done, once and for all, with lying.
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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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If the hypothesis of evolution is true, living matter must have arisen from non-living matter for by the hypothesis the condition of the globe was at one time such, that living matter could not have existed in it, life being entirely incompatible with the gaseous state.
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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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The scientific imagination always restrains itself within the limits of probability.
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Friendship involves many things but, above all the power of going outside oneself and appreciating what is noble and loving in another.
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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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It is far better for a man to go wrong in freedom than to go right in chains.
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Rome is the one great spiritual organisation which is able to resist and must, as a matter of life and death, the progress of science and modern civilization
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In scientific work, those who refuse to go beyond fact rarely get as far as fact.
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