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

More quotes by Thomas Huxley

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The known is finite, the unknown infinite spiritually we find ourselves on a tiny island in the middle of a boundless ocean of the inexplicable. It is our task, from generation to generation, to drain a small amount of additional land.
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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In scientific work, those who refuse to go beyond fact rarely get as far as fact.
Thomas Huxley
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Science is simply common sense at its best, that is, rigidly accurate in observation, and merciless to fallacy in logic.
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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The great tragedy of science - the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact.
Thomas Huxley
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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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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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I do not say think as I think, but think in my way. Fear no shadows, least of all in that great spectre of personal unhappiness which binds half the world to orthodoxy.
Thomas Huxley
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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.
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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It is a popular delusion that the scientific enquirer is under an obligation not to go beyond generalisation of observed facts...but anyone who is practically acquainted with scientific work is aware that those who refuse to go beyond the facts, rarely get as far.
Thomas Huxley
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In matters of the intellect, do not pretend that conclusions are certain which are not demonstrated or demonstrable. That I take to be the agnostic faith, which if a man keep whole and undefiled, he shall not be ashamed to look the universe in the face, whatever the future may have in store for him.
Thomas Huxley
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It is not what we believe, but why we believe it. Moral responsibility lies in diligently weighing the evidence. We must actively doubt we have to scrutinize our views, not take them on trust. No virtue attached to blindly accepting orthodoxy, however 'venerable'.
Thomas Huxley
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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.
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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We are prone to see what lies behind our eyes, rather than what apprears before them.
Thomas Huxley
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Every great advance in natural knowledge has involved the absolute rejection of authority.
Thomas Huxley
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I take it that the good of mankind means the attainment, by every man, of all the happiness which he can enjoy without diminishing the happiness of his fellow men
Thomas Huxley
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The rules of the game are what we call the laws of nature.
Thomas Huxley