238 Quotes by Thomas Henry Huxley

The man of science has learned to believe in justification, not by faith, but by verification.

There is the greatest practical benefit in making a few failures early in life.

In fact a favourite problem of Tyndall is-Given the molecular forces in a mutton chop, deduce Hamlet or Faust therefrom. He is confident that the Physics of the Future will solve this easily.

The great thing in the world is not so much to seek happiness as to earn peace and self-respect.

If a little knowledge is dangerous, where is the man who has so much as to be out of danger?

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.

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.

Of all the senseless babble I have ever had occasion to read, the demonstrations of these philosophers who undertake to tell us all about the nature of God would be the worst, if they were not surpassed by the still greater absurdities of the philosophers who try to prove that there is no God.

Surely there is a time to submit to guidance and a time to take one’s own way at all hazards.