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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.

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
Life
Taught
Recollect
People
Values
Inborn
Energy
Cleverness
Next
Grip
Cannot
Mere
Everything
Intellectual
Things
Value
Never
Learning

More quotes by Thomas Huxley

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Oh devil! truth is better than much profit. I have searched over the grounds of my belief, and if wife and child and name and fame were all to be lost to me one after the other as the penalty, still I will not lie.
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It is the first duty of a hypothesis to be intelligible.
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The great thing in the world is not so much to seek happiness as to earn peace and self-respect.
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If then, said I, the question is put to me would I rather have a miserable ape for a grandfather or a man highly endowed by nature and possessing great means and influence and yet who employs those faculties for the mere purpose of introducing ridicule into a grave scientific discussion-I unhesitatingly affirm my preference for the ape.
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Skepticism is the highest duty and blind faith the one unpardonable sin.
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Follow humbly wherever and to whatever abyss Nature leads, or you shall learn nothing.
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[Scientists] have learned to respect nothing but evidence, and to believe that their highest duty lies in submitting to it however it may jar against their inclinations.
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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.
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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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Surely there is a time to submit to guidance and a time to take one's own way at all hazards.
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My business is to teach my aspirations to confirm themselves to fact, not to try and make facts harmonize with my aspirations.
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Surely it must be plain that an ingenious man could speculate without end on both sides, and find analogies for all his dreams. Nor does it help me to tell me that the aspirations of mankind
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Life is like walking along a crowded street--there always seem to be fewer obstacles to getting along on the opposite pavement--and yet, if one crosses over, matters are rarely mended.
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I have never been able to understand why pigeon-shooting at Hurlingham should be refined and polite, while a rat-killing match in Whitechapel is low.
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The rules of the game are what we call the laws of nature.
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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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Science has fulfilled her function when she has ascertained and enunciated truth.
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Education is the instruction of the intellect in the laws of Nature.
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Science is nothing, but trained and organized common sense.
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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.
Thomas Huxley