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If a man cannot see a church, it is preposterous to take his opinion about its altar-piece or painted window.

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
Cannot
Altars
Take
Painted
Men
Observation
Piece
Window
Pieces
Opinion
Preposterous
Church
Altar

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Let us have sweet girl graduates by all means. They will be none the less sweet for a little wisdom and the golden hair will not curl less gracefully outside the head by reason of there being brains within.
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The only question which any wise man can ask himself, and which any honest man will ask himself, is whether a doctrine is true or false.
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Better live a crossing-sweeper than die and be made to talk twaddle by a medium hired at a guinea a seance.
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The student of Nature wonders the more and is astonished the less, the more conversant he becomes with her operations but of all the perennial miracles she offers to his inspection, perhaps the most worthy of admiration is the development of a plant or of an animal from its embryo.
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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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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.
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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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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.
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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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My experience of the world is that things left to themselves don't get right.
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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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Science and literature are not two things, but two sides of one thing.
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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!'
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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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The very existence of society depends on the fact that every member of it tacitly admits he is not the exclusive possessor of himself, and that he admits the claim of the polity of which he forms a part, to act, to some extent, as his master.
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The scientific imagination always restrains itself within the limits of probability.
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It may be well to remember that the highest level of moral aspiration recorded in history was reached by a few ancient Jews--Micah, Isaiah, and the rest--who took no count whatever of what might not happen to them after death. It is not obvious to me why the same point should not by and by be reached by the Gentiles.
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The birth of science was the death of superstition.
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We are prone to see what lies behind our eyes, rather than what apprears before them.
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Nothing can be more incorrect than the assumption one sometimes meets with, that physics has one method, chemistry another, and biology a third.
Thomas Huxley