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I'd rather have an ape for an ancestor than a bishop.

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
Bishop
Bishops
Apes
Ancestor
Rather

More quotes by Thomas Huxley

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There is no sea more dangerous than the ocean of practical politics none in which there is more need of good pilotage and of a single, unfaltering purpose when the waves rise high.
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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Tolerably early in life I discovered that one of the unpardonable sins, in the eyes of most people, is for a man to go about unlabeled. The world regards such a person as the police do an unmuzzled dog.
Thomas Huxley
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The foundation of all morality is to have done, once and for all, with lying to give up pretending to believe that for which there is no evidence, and repeating unintelligible propositions about things beyond the possibilities of knowledge.
Thomas Huxley
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Veracity is the heart of morality.
Thomas Huxley
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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
Thomas Huxley
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Material advancement has its share in moral and intellectual progress. Becky Sharp's acute remark that it is not difficult to be virtuous on ten thousand a year has its applications to nations and it is futile to expect a hungry and squalid population to be anything but violent and gross.
Thomas Huxley
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That which lies before the human race is a constant struggle to maintain and improve, in opposition to State of Nature, the State of Art of an organized polity in which, and by which, man may develop a worthy civilization
Thomas Huxley
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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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... our Physick and Anatomy have embraced such infinite varieties of being, have laid open such new worlds in time and space, have grappled, not unsuccessfully, with such complex problems, that the eyes of Vesalius and of Harvey might be dazzled by the sight of the tree that has grown out of their grain of mustard seed.
Thomas Huxley
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Trust a witness in all matters in which neither his self-interest, his passions, his prejudices, nor the love of the marvellous is strongly concerned. When they are involved, require corroborative evidence in exact proportion to the contravention of probability by the thing testified.
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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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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Though under-instruction is a bad thing, it is not impossible that over-instruction may be worse.
Thomas Huxley
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Every living creature commences its existence under a form different from, and simpler than, that which it eventually attains.
Thomas Huxley
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Ecclesiasticism in science is only unfaithfulness to truth
Thomas Huxley
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The dogma of the infallibility of the Bible is no more self-evident than is that of the infallibility of the popes.
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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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.
Thomas Huxley
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Genius as an explosive power beats gunpowder hollow and if knowledge, which should give that power guidance, is wanting, the chances are not small that the rocket will simply run amuck among friends and foes.
Thomas Huxley