Thomas Henry Huxley

Science … commits suicide when it adopts a creed.

The antagonism between science and religion, about which we hear so much, appears to me to be purely factitious

Scientific men get an awkward habit — no, I won't call it that, for it is a valuable habit — of believing nothing unless there is evidence for it; and they have a way of looking upon belief which is not based upon evidence, not only as …

irrationally held truths may be more harmful than reasoned errors.

it is the customary fate of new truths to begin as heresies and to end as superstitions

Logical consequences are the scarecrows of fools and the beacons of wise men.

Becky Sharp's acute remark that it is not difficult to be virtuous on ten thousand a year, has its application to nations; and it is futile to expect a hungry and squalid population to be anything but violent and gross.

The man who is all morality and intellect, although he may be good and even great, is, after all, only half a man.

veracity is the heart of morality.

In an ideal University, as I conceive it, a man should be able to obtain instruction in all forms of knowledge, and discipline in the use of all the methods by which knowledge is obtained.

That mysterious independent variable of political calculation, Public Opinion.

Men are beginning, once more, to awake to the fact that matters of belief and of speculation are of absolutely infinite practical importance. ...Change is in the air. ... It insists on reopening all questions and asking all institutions, …

I do not advocate burning your ship to get rid of the cockroaches.

The only good that I can see in the demonstration of the truth of "Spiritualism" is to furnish an additional argument against suicide. Better live a crossing-sweeper than die and be made to talk twaddle by a "medium" hired at a guinea a …

I can assure you that there is the greatest practical benefit in making a few failures early in life. You learn that which is of inestimable importance — that there are a great many people in the world who are just as clever as you are.

If some great Power would agree to make me always think what is true and do what is right, on condition of being turned into a sort of clock and wound up every morning before I got out of bed, I should instantly close with the offer. The …

The great tragedy of Science — the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact.

Only two suppositions seem to be open to us — Either each species of crocodile has been specially created, or it has arisen out of some pre-existing form by the operation of natural causes. Choose your hypothesis; I have chosen mine. I can …

The language of the chalk is not hard to learn, not nearly so hard as Latin, if you only want to get at the broad features of the story it has to tell; and I propose that we now set to work to spell that story out together.

The chalk is no unimportant element in the masonry of the earth’s crust, and it impresses a peculiar stamp, varying with the conditions to which it is exposed, on the scenery of the districts in which it occurs.

If a well were sunk at our feet in the midst of the city of Norwich, the diggers would very soon find themselves at work in that white substance almost too soft to be called rock, with which we are all familiar as "chalk".

The only medicine for suffering, crime, and all the other woes of mankind, is wisdom.

The life, the fortune, and the happiness of every one of us, and, more or less, of those who are connected with us, do depend upon our knowing something of the rules of a game infinitely more difficult and complicated than chess.

For every man the world is as fresh as it was at the first day, and as full of untold novelties for him who has the eyes to see them.