Quote

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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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
True
Size
Slightest
Cannot
Degrees
Grandeur
Doe
Materials
Impressed
Great
Fate
Territory
Going
Resources
Degree
Make
Nation
Terror
Bigness
Things
Issues
Issue
Sublimity
Nations
Material
Hangs

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The secret of genius is to carry the spirit of childhood into maturity.
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We live in the hope and faith that, by the advance of molecular physics, we shall by-and-by be able to see our way as clearly from the constituents of water to the properties of water, as we are now able to deduce the operations of a watch from the form of its parts and the manner in which they are put together.
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Every great advance in natural knowledge has involved the absolute rejection of authority.
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Deduction, which takes us from the general proposition to facts again-teaches us, if I may so say, to anticipate from the ticket what is inside the bundle.
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The only people, scientific or other, who never make mistakes are those who do nothing.
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The science, the art, the jurisprudence, the chief political and social theories, of the modern world have grown out of Greece and Rome-not by favour of, but in the teeth of, the fundamental teachings of early Christianity, to which science, art, and any serious occupation with the things of this world were alike despicable.
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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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No slavery can be abolished without a double emancipation, and the master will benefit by freedom more than the freed-man.
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Science and literature are not two things, but two sides of one thing.
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It sounds paradoxical to say the attainment of scientific truth has been effected, to a great extent, by the help of scientific errors.
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The scientific imagination always restrains itself within the limits of probability.
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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
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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
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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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Only one absolute certainty is possible to man, namely that at any given moment the feeling which he has exists.
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The doctrine of transmigrationÂ… was a means of constructing a plausible vindication of the ways of the cosmos to man Â… none but very hasty thinkers will reject it on the grounds of inherent absurdity.
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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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That which endures is not one or another association of living forms, but the process of which the cosmos is the product, and of which these are among the transitory expressions.
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There is no greater mistake than the hasty conclusion that opinions are worthless because they are badly argued.
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There is far too much of the feeding-bottle in education and young people ought to be supplied with good intellectual food and then left to help themselves.
Thomas Huxley