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And when you cannot prove that people are wrong, but only that they are absurd, the best course is to let them alone.

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
Prove
Courses
Course
Alone
Wrong
Cannot
Best
People
Absurd

More quotes by Thomas Huxley

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I cannot say that I am in the slightest degree impressed by your bigness, or your material resources, as such. Size is not grandeur, and territory does not make a nation. The great issue, about which hangs true sublimity, and the terror of overhanging fate, is what are you going to do with all these things?
Thomas Huxley
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Whatever evil voices may rage, Science, secure among the powers that are eternal, will do her work and be blessed.
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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.
Thomas Huxley
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There is the greatest practical benefit in making a few failures early in life.
Thomas Huxley
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Social progress means a checking of the cosmic process at every step and the substitution for it of another, which may be called the ethical process the end of which is not the survival of those who may happen to be the fittest, in respect of the whole of the conditions which obtain, but of those who are ethically the best.
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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It is better to read a little and thoroughly than cram a crude undigested mass into my head, though it be great in quantity.
Thomas Huxley
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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
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There is assuredly no more effectual method of clearing up one's own mind on any subject than by talking it over, so to speak, with men of real power and grasp, who have considered it from a totally different point of view.
Thomas Huxley
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Living things have no inertia, and tend to no equilibrium.
Thomas Huxley
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Genius, as an explosive power, beats gunpowder hollow.
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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It is not to be forgotten that what we call rational grounds for our beliefs are often extremely irrational attempts to justify our instincts.
Thomas Huxley
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No man is any the worse off because another acquires wealth by trade, or by the exercise of a profession on the contrary, he cannot have acquired his wealth except by benefiting others to the extent of what they considered to be its value.
Thomas Huxley
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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.
Thomas Huxley
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The great thing in the world is not so much to seek happiness as to earn peace and self-respect.
Thomas Huxley
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In truth, the laboratory is the forecourt of the temple of philosophy, and whoso has not offered sacrifices and undergone purification there has little chance of admission into the sanctuary.
Thomas Huxley
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Follow humbly wherever and to whatever abyss Nature leads, or you shall learn nothing.
Thomas Huxley
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The known is finite, the unknown infinite intellectually we stand on an islet in the midst of an illimitable ocean of inexplicability. Our business in every generation is to reclaim a little more land, to add something to the extent and the solidity of our possessions.
Thomas Huxley
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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.
Thomas Huxley