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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. You Learn To Put Your Trust, By And By, In An Economy And Frugality Of The Exercise Of Your Powers, Both Moral And Intellectual; And You Very Soon Find Out, If You Have Not Found It Out Before, That Patience And Tenacity Of Purpose Are Worth More Than Twice Their Weight Of Cleverness.

-Thomas Huxley

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I Can Assure You

Thomas Huxley

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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. You Learn To Put Your Trust, By And By, In An Economy And Frugality Of The Exercise Of Your Powers, Both Moral And Intellectual; And You Very Soon Find Out, If You Have Not Found It Out Before, That Patience And Tenacity Of Purpose Are Worth More Than Twice Their Weight Of Cleverness.

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Mathematics May Be Compared To A Mill Of Exquisite Workmanship, Which Grinds Your Stuff To Any Degree Of Fineness.

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.

I Have No Faith, Very Little Hope, And As Much Charity As I Can Afford.

The Very Existence Of Society Depends On The Fact That Every Member Of It Tacitly Admits He Is Not The Exclusive Possessor Of Himself, And That He Admits The Claim Of The Polity Of Which He Forms A Part, To Act, To Some Extent, As His Master.

... 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.

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.

There Is No Sadder Sight In The World Than To See A Beautiful Theory Killed By A Brutal Fact.

The Bible Account Of The Creation Of Eve Is A Preposterous Fable.

Surely There Is A Time To Submit To Guidance And A Time To Take One's Own Way At All Hazards.

It Ought Not To Be Unpleasant To Say That Which One Honestly Believes Or Disbelieves. That It So Constantly Is Painful To Do So, Is Quite Enough Obstacle To The Progress Of Mankind In That Most Valuable Of All Qualities, Honesty Of Word Or Of Deed.

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.

The Occurrence Of Successive Forms Of Life Upon Our Globe Is An Historical Fact, Which Cannot Be Disputed; And The Relation Of These Successive Forms, As Stages Of Evolution Of The Same Type, Is Established In Various Cases.

If There Is Anything In The World Which I Do Firmly Believe In, It Is The Universal Validity Of The Law Of Causation.

In Scientific Work, Those Who Refuse To Go Beyond Fact Rarely Get As Far As Fact.

I Doubt The Fact, To Begin With, But If It Be So Even, What Is This But In Grand Words Asking Me To Believe A Thing Because I Like It.

The Clergy Are At Present Divided Into Three Sections: An Immense Body Who Are Ignorant; A Small Proportion Who Know And Are Silent; And A Minute Minority Who Know And Speak According To Their Knowledge.

As To Sagacity, I Should Say That His Judgement Respecting The Warmest Place And The Softest Cushion In A Room Is Infallible, His Punctuality At Meal Times Is Admirable, And His Pertinacity In Jumping On People's Shoulders Till They Give Him Some Of The Best Of What Is Going, Indicates Great Firmness.

It Is Given To Few To Add The Store Of Knowledge, To Strike New Springs Of Thought, Or To Shape New Forms Of Beauty. But So Sure As It Is That Men Live Not By Bread, But By Ideas, So Sure Is It That The Future Of The World Lies In The Hands Of Those Who Are Able To Carry The Interpretation Of Nature A Step Further Than Their Predecessors.

That Man, I Think, Has Had A Liberal Education, Who Has Been So Trained In Youth That His Body Is The Ready Servant Of His Will.

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.

A Well-worn Adage Advises Those Who Set Out Upon A Great Enterprise To Count The Cost, Yet Some Of The Greatest Enterprises Have Succeeded Because The People Who Undertook Them Did Not Count The Cost.

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.

The Secret Of Genius Is To Carry The Spirit Of Childhood Into Maturity.

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.

Education Is The Instruction Of The Intellect In The Laws Of Nature, Under Which Name I Include Not Merely Things And Their Forces, But People And Their Ways; And The Fashioning Of The Affections And Of The Will Into An Earnest And Loving Desire To Move In Harmony With Those Laws.

Nothing Can Be More Incorrect Than The Assumption One Sometimes Meets With, That Physics Has One Method, Chemistry Another, And Biology A Third.

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.

My Business Is To Teach My Aspirations To Confirm Themselves To Fact, Not To Try And Make Facts Harmonize With My Aspirations.

Each Such Answer To The Great Question, Invariably Asserted By The Followers Of Its Propounder, If Not By Himself, To Be Complete And Final, Remains In High Authority And Esteem, It May Be For One Century, Or It May Be For Twenty: But, As Invariably, Time Proves Each Reply To Have Been A Mere Approximation To The Truth Tolerable Chiefly On Account Of The Ignorance Of Those By Whom It Was Accepted, And Wholly Intolerable When Tested By The Larger Knowledge Of Their Successors.

It Is Far Better For A Man To Go Wrong In Freedom Than To Go Right In Chains.

Perhaps No Order Of Mammals Presents Us With So Extraordinary A Series Of Gradations As This [step By Step, From Humans To Apes To Monkeys To Lemurs] - Leading Us Insensibly From The Crown And Summit Of The Animal Creation Down To Creatures, From Which There Is But A Step, As It Seems, To The Lowest, Smallest, And Least Intelligent Of The Placental Mammalia. It Is As If Nature Herself Had Forseen The Arrogance Of Man, And With Roman Severity Had Provided That His Intellect, By Its Very Triumphs, Should Call Into Prominence The Slaves, Admonishing The Conqueror That He Is But Dust.

It Is Not Who Is Right, But What Is Right, That Is Of Importance.

Genius, As An Explosive Power, Beats Gunpowder Hollow.

I Really See No Harm Which Can Come Of Giving Our Children A Little Knowledge Of Physiology. ... The Instruction Must Be Real, Based Upon Observation, Eked Out By Good Explanatory Diagrams And Models, And Conveyed By A Teacher Whose Own Knowledge Has Been Acquired By A Study Of The Facts; And Not The Mere Catechismal Parrot-work Which Too Often Usurps The Place Of Elementary Teaching.

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.

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.

I Have Endeavoured To Show That No Absolute Structural Line Of Demarcation, Wider Than That Between The Animals Which Immediately Succeed Us In The Scale, Can Be Drawn Between The Animal World And Ourselves; And I May Add The Expression Of My Belief That The Attempt To Draw A Physical Distinction Is Equally Futile, And That Even The Highest Faculties Of Feeling And Of Intellect Begin To Germinate In Lower Forms Of Life.

The Great Thing In The World Is Not So Much To Seek Happiness As To Earn Peace And Self-respect.

Elohim Was, In Logical Terminology, The Genus Of Which Ghosts, Chemosh, Dagon, Baal, And Jahveh Were Species. The Israelite Believed Jahveh To Be Immeasurably Superior To All Other Kinds Of Elohim. The Inscription On The Moabite Stone Shows That King Mesa Held Chemosh To Be, As Unquestionably, The Superior Of Jahveh.

Follow Humbly Wherever And To Whatever Abyss Nature Leads, Or You Shall Learn Nothing.

Every Philosophical Thinker Hails It [the Origin Of Species] As A Veritable Whitworth Gun In The Armoury Of Liberalism.

The Student Of Nature Wonders The More And Is Astonished The Less, The More Conversant He Becomes With Her Operations; But Of All The Perennial Miracles She Offers To His Inspection, Perhaps The Most Worthy Of Admiration Is The Development Of A Plant Or Of An Animal From Its Embryo.

Any One Who Has Studied The History Of Science Knows That Almost Every Great Step Therein Has Been Made By The "anticipation Of Nature," That Is, By The Invention Of Hypotheses, Which, Though Verifiable, Often Had Very Little Foundation To Start With; And, Not Unfrequently, In Spite Of A Long Career Of Usefulness, Turned Out To Be Wholly Erroneous In The Long Run.

As For Your Doctrines I Am Prepared To Go To The Stake If Requisite ... I Trust You Will Not Allow Yourself To Be In Any Way Disgusted Or Annoyed By The Considerable Abuse & Misrepresentation Which Unless I Greatly Mistake Is In Store For You... And As To The Curs Which Will Bark And Yelp - You Must Recollect That Some Of Your Friends At Any Rate Are Endowed With An Amount Of Combativeness Which (though You Have Often & Justly Rebuked It) May Stand You In Good Stead - I Am Sharpening Up My Claws And Beak In Readiness.

Teach A Child What Is Wise, That Is Morality. Teach Him What Is Wise And Beautiful, That Is Religion!

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.

I Have Always Been, Am, And Propose To Remain A Mere Scholar. All That I Have Ever Proposed To Myself Is To Say, This And This I Have Learned; Thus And Thus Have I Learned It; Go Thou And Learn Better; But Do Not Thrust On My Shoulders The Responsibility For Your Own Laziness If You Elect To Take, On My Authority, Conclusions The Value Of Which You Ought To Have Tested For Yourself.

Nothing Great In Science Has Ever Been Done By Men, Whatever Their Powers, In Whom The Divine Afflatus Of The Truth-seeker Was Wanting.

To A Person Uninstructed In Natural History, His Country Or Sea-side Stroll Is A Walk Through A Gallery Filled With Wonderful Works Of Art, Nine-tenths Of Which Have Their Faces Turned To The Wall. Teach Him Something Of Natural History, And You Place In His Hands A Catalogue Of Those Which Are Worth Turning Around. Surely Our Innocent Pleasures Are Not So Abundant In This Life, That We Can Afford To Despise This Or Any Other Source Of Them.

It Is Because The Body Is A Machine That Education Is Possible. Education Is The Formation Of Habits, A Superinducing Of An Artificial Organization Upon The Natural Organization Of The Body.

History Warns Us That It Is The Customary Fate Of New Truths To Begin As Heresies And To End As Superstitions.

Freedom And Order Are Not Incompatible... Truth Is Strength... Free Discussion Is The Very Life Of Truth.

Science Is Simply Common Sense At Its Best.

It Is Not To Be Forgotten That What We Call Rational Grounds For Our Beliefs Are Often Extremely Irrational Attempts To Justify Our Instincts.

The Population Question Is The Real Riddle Of The Sphinx, To Which No Political Oedipus Has As Yet Found The Answer. In View Of The Ravages Of The Terrible Monster Over-multiplication, All Other Riddle Sink Into Insignificance.

All Knowledge Is Good. It Is Impossible To Say Any Fragment Of Knowledge, However Insignificant Or Remote From One's Ordinary Pursuits, May Not Some Day Be Turned To Account.

I Would Rather Be The Offspring Of Two Apes Than Be A Man And Afraid To Face The Truth.

There Is No Alleviation For The Sufferings Of Mankind Except Veracity Of Thought And Of Action, And The Resolute Facing Of The World As It Is When The Garment Of Make-believe By Which Pious Hands Have Hidden Its Uglier Features Is Stripped Off.

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.

Men Can Intoxicate Themselves With Ideas As Effectually As With Alcohol Or With Bang And Produce, Be Dint Of Serious Thinking, Mental Conditions Hardly Distinguishable From Monomania.

A World Of Facts Lies Outside And Beyond The World Of Words.

The Chess-board Is The World, The Pieces Are The Phenomena Of The Universe, The Rules Of The Game Are What We Call The Laws Of Nature. The Player On The Other Side Is Hidden From Us.

Science ... Warns Me To Be Careful How I Adopt A View Which Jumps With My Preconceptions, And To Require Stronger Evidence For Such Belief Than For One To Which I Was Previously Hostile. My Business Is To Teach My Aspirations To Conform Themselves To Fact, Not To Try And Make Facts Harmonize With My Aspirations.

Every Great Advance In Natural Knowledge Has Involved The Absolute Rejection Of Authority.

Authority And Power

I Am Too Much Of A Sceptic To Deny The Possibility Of Anything...

The Child Who Has Been Taught To Make An Accurate Elevation, Plan, And Section Of A Pint Pot Has Had An Admirable Training In Accuracy Of Eye And Hand.

Better Live A Crossing-sweeper Than Die And Be Made To Talk Twaddle By A "medium" Hired At A Guinea A Seance.

Action Is The Catalyst That Creates Accomplishments. It Is The Path That Takes Us From Uncrafted Hopes To Realized Dreams.

God Give Me Strength To Face A Fact Though It Slay Me.

Science Is Nothing But Trained And Organized Common Sense Differing From The Latter Only As A Veteran May Differ From A Raw Recruit: And Its Methods Differ From Those Of Common Sense Only As Far As The Guardsman's Cut And Thrust Differ From The Manner In Which A Savage Wields His Club.

In Matters Of Intellect, Follow Your Reason As Far As It Will Take You, Without Regard For Any Other Consideration.

Not Far From The Invention Of Fire We Must Rank The Invention Of Doubt.

Claiming My Right To Follow Whethersoever Science Should Lead... It Is As Respectable To Be Modified Monkey As Modified Dirt.

No Mistake Is So Commonly Made By Clever People As That Of Assuming A Cause To Be Bad Because The Arguments Of Its Supporters Are, To A Great Extent, Nonsensical

Every Living Creature Commences Its Existence Under A Form Different From, And Simpler Than, That Which It Eventually Attains.

Creation,' In The Ordinary Sense Of The Word, Is Perfectly Conceivable. I Find No Difficulty In Conceiving That, At Some Former Period, This Universe Was Not In Existence, And That It Made Its Appearance In Six Days (or Instantaneously, If That Is Preferred), In Consequence Of The Volition Of Some Preexisting Being.

Size Is Not Grandeur, And Territory Does Not Make A Nation.

Skepticism Is The Highest Duty And Blind Faith The One Unpardonable Sin.

The Rules Of The Game Are What We Call The Laws Of Nature.

Expanding Universe

The Known Is Finite, The Unknown Infinite; Spiritually We Find Ourselves On A Tiny Island In The Middle Of A Boundless Ocean Of The Inexplicable. It Is Our Task, From Generation To Generation, To Drain A Small Amount Of Additional Land.

Agnosticism Simply Means That A Man Shall Not Say That He Knows Or Believes That For Which He Has No Grounds For Professing To Believe.

[scientists] Have Learned To Respect Nothing But Evidence, And To Believe That Their Highest Duty Lies In Submitting To It However It May Jar Against Their Inclinations.

It Is Better To Read A Little And Thoroughly Than Cram A Crude Undigested Mass Into My Head, Though It Be Great In Quantity.

Do What You Can To Do What You Ought, And Leave Hoping And Fearing Alone.

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.

Learn What Is True In Order To Do What Is Right.

It Is An Error To Imagine That Evolution Signifies A Constant Tendency To Increased Perfection. That Process Undoubtedly Involves A Constant Remodeling Of The Organism In Adaptation To New Conditions; But It Depends On The Nature Of Those Conditions Whether The Direction Of The Modifications Effected Shall Be Upward Or Downward.

The Quarrels Of Theologians And Philosophers Have Not Been About Religion, But About Philosophy; And Philosophers Not Unfrequently Seem To Entertain The Same Feeling Toward Theologians That Sportsmen Cherish Toward Poachers.

The Foundation Of Morality Is To Have Done, Once And For All, With Lying.

You May Read Any Quantity Of Books, And You May Almost As Ignorant As You Were At Starting, If You Don't Have, At The Back Of Yourminds, The Change For Words In Definite Images Which Can Only Be Acquired Through The Operation Of Your Observing Faculties On The Phenomena Of Nature.

The Scientific Imagination Always Restrains Itself Within The Limits Of Probability.

If Individuality Has No Play, Society Does Not Advance; If Individuality Breaks Out Of All Bounds, Society Perishes.

For These Two Years I Have Been Gravitating Towards Your Doctrines, And Since The Publication Of Your Primula Paper With Accelerated Velocity. By About This Time Next Year I Expect To Have Shot Past You, And To Find You Pitching Into Me For Being More Darwinian Than Yourself. However, You Have Set Me Going, And Must Just Take The Consequences, For I Warn You I Will Stop At No Point So Long As Clear Reasoning Will Take Me Further.

The Only Freedom I Care About Is The Freedom To Do Right; The Freedom To Do Wrong I Am Ready To Part With On The Cheapest Terms To Anyone Who Will Take It Of Me

Friendship Involves Many Things But, Above All The Power Of Going Outside Oneself And Appreciating What Is Noble And Loving In Another.

The Besetting Sin Of Able Men Is Impatience Of Contradiction And Of Criticism. Even Those Who Do Their Best To Resist The Temptation, Yield To It Almost Unconsciously And Become The Tools Of Toadies And Flatterers. "authorities," "disciples," And "schools" Are The Curse Of Science And Do More To Interfere With The Work Of The Scientific Spirit Than All Its Enemies.

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.

If The Twentieth Century Is To Be Better Than The Nineteenth, It Will Be Because There Are Among Us Men Who Walk In Priestley's Footsteps....to All Eternity, The Sum Of Truth And Right Will Have Been Increased By Their Means; To All Eternity, Falsehoods And Injustice Will Be The Weaker Because They Have Lived.

Missionaries, Whether Of Philosophy Or Religion, Rarely Make Rapid Way, Unless Their Preachings Fall In With The Prepossessions Ofthe Multitude Of Shallow Thinkers, Or Can Be Made To Serve As A Stalking-horse For The Promotion Of The Practical Aims Of The Still Larger Multitude, Who Do Not Profess To Think Much, But Are Quite Certain They Want A Great Deal.

To Persons Uninstructed In Natural History, Their Country Or Seaside Stroll Is A Walk Through A Gallery Filled With Wonderful Works Of Art, Nine-tenths Of Which Have Their Faces Turned To The Wall.

The Rung Of A Ladder Was Never Meant To Rest Upon.

The Saying That A Little Knowledge Is A Dangerous Thing Is, To My Mind, A Very Dangerous Adage. If Knowledge Is Real And Genuine, I Do Not Believe That It Is Other Than A Very Valuable Posession, However Infinitesimal Its Quantity May Be. Indeed, If A Little Knowledge Is Dangerous, Where Is A Man Who Has So Much As To Be Out Of Danger?

Books Are The Money Of Literature, But Only The Counters Of Science.

The Facts Of Variability, Of The Struggle For Existence, Of Adaptation To Conditions, Were Notorious Enough; But None Of Us Had Suspected That The Road To The Heart Of The Species Problem Lay Through Them, Until Darwin And Wallace Dispelled The Darkness.

It Is The First Duty Of A Hypothesis To Be Intelligible.

Mr. Darwin's Hypothesis Is Not, So Far As I Am Aware, Inconsistent With Any Known Biological Fact; On The Contrary, If Admitted, The Facts Of Development, Of Comparative Anatomy, Of Geographical Distribution, And Of Palaeontology, Become Connected Together, And Exhibit A Meaning Such As They Never Possessed Before; And I, For One, Am Fully Convinced That If Not Precisely True, That Hypothesis Is As Near An Approximation To The Truth As, For Example, The Copernican Hypothesis Was To The True Theory Of The Planetary Motions.

If The Perpetual Oscillation Of Nations Between Anarchy And Despotism Is To Be Replaced By The Steady March Of Self-restraining Freedom, It Will Be Because Men Will Gradually Bring Themselves To Deal With Political, As They Now Deal With Scientific Questions.

A Good Man: Body Serves His Will And Enjoys Hard Work, Clear Intellect That Understands The Truths Of Nature, Full Of Passion For Life But Controlled By His Will, Well-developed Conscience, Loves Beauty In Art And Nature, Despises Inferior Morality, Respects Himself And Others.

If A Little Knowledge Is Dangerous, Where Is The Man Who Has So Much As To Be Out Of Danger?

A Man Has No Reason To Be Ashamed Of Having An Ape For His Grandfather. If There Were An Ancestor Whom I Should Feel Shame In Recalling It Would Rather Be A Man Who Plunges Into Scientific Questions With Which He Has No Real Acquaintance, Only To Obscure Them By An Aimless Rhetoric.

I Am Too Much Of A Sceptic To Deny The Possibility Of Anything Especially As I Am Now So Much Occupied With Theology But I Don't See My Way To Your Conclusion.

Not Only Do I Disbelieve In The Need For Compensation, But I Believe That The Seeking For Rewards And Punishments Out Of This Lifeleads Men To A Ruinous Ignorance Of The Fact That Their Inevitable Rewards And Punishments Are Here.

Try To Learn Something About Everything And Everything About Something.

Sit Down Before Fact As A Little Child, Be Prepared To Give Up Every Conceived Notion, Follow Humbly Wherever And Whatever Abysses Nature Leads, Or You Will Learn Nothing.

If A Man Cannot See A Church, It Is Preposterous To Take His Opinion About Its Altar-piece Or Painted Window.

. . . I Fail To Find A Trace [in Protestantism] Of Any Desire To Set Reason Free. The Most That Can Be Discovered Is A Proposal To Change Masters. From Being A Slave Of The Papacy, The Intellect Was To Become The Serf Of The Bible.

In Science, As In Art, And, As I Believe, In Every Other Sphere Of Human Activity, There May Be Wisdom In A Multitude Of Counsellors, But It Is Only In One Or Two Of Them.

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

Can Any One Deny That The Old Israelites Conceived Jahveh Not Only In The Image Of A Man, But In That Of A Changeable, Irritable, And, Occasionally, Violent Man?

To Say That An Idea Is Necessary Is Simply To Affirm That We Cannot Conceive The Contrary; And The Fact That We Cannot Conceive The Contrary Of Any Belief May Be A Presumption, But Is Certainly No Proof, Of Its Truth.

Protoplasm, Simple Or Nucleated, Is The Formal Basis Of All Life. It Is The Clay Of The Potter: Which, Bake It And Paint It As Hewill, Remains Clay, Separated By Artifice, And Not By Nature From The Commonest Brick Or Sun-dried Clod.

There Are Savages Without God In Any Proper Sense Of The Word, But None Without Ghosts.

The Improver Of Natural Knowledge Absolutely Refuses To Acknowledge Authority, As Such. For Him, Skepticism Is The Highest Of Duties; Blind Faith The One Unpardonable Sin.

The Struggle For Existence Holds As Much In The Intellectual As In The Physical World. A Theory Is A Species Of Thinking, And Its Right To Exist Is Coextensive With Its Power Of Resisting Extinction By Its Rivals.

I Hated Tobacco. I Could Have Almost Lent My Support To Any Institution That Had For Its Object The Putting Of Tobacco Smokers To Death...i Now Feel That Smoking In Moderation Is A Comfortable And Laudable Practice, And Is Productive Of Good. There Is No More Harm In A Pipe Than In A Cup Of Tea. You May Poison Yourself By Drinking Too Much Green Tea, And Kill Yourself By Eating Too Many Beefsteaks. For My Part, I Consider That Tobacco, In Moderation, Is A Sweetener And Equalizer Of The Temper.

Only One Absolute Certainty Is Possible To Man, Namely That At Any Given Moment The Feeling Which He Has Exists.

Absolute Certainty

Cosmic Evolution May Teach Us How The Good And Evil Tendencies Of Man May Have Come About; But, In Itself, It Is Incompetent To Furnish Any Better Reason Why What We Call Good Is Preferable To What We Call Evil Than We Had Before. Some Day, I Doubt Not, We Shall Arrive At An Understanding Of The Evolution Of The Aesthetic Faculty; But All The Understanding In The World Will Neither Increase Nor Diminish The Force Of The Intuition That This Is Beautiful And That Is Ugly.

Economy Does Not Lie In Sparing Money, But In Spending It Wisely.

Make Up Your Mind To Act Decidedly And Take The Consequences. No Good Is Ever Done In This World By Hesitation.

Self Confidence

Irrationally Held Truths May Be More Harmful Than Reasoned Errors.

A Man Who Speaks Out Honestly And Fearlessly That Which He Knows, And That Which He Believes, Will Always Enlist The Good Will And The Respect, However Much He May Fail In Winning The Assent, Of His Fellow Men.

Mathematics May Be Compared To A Mill Of Exquisite Workmanship, Which Grinds You Stuff Of Any Degree Of Fineness; But, Nevertheless, What You Get Out Depends Upon What You Put In; And As The Grandest Mill In The World Will Not Extract Wheat-flour From Peascods, So Pages Of Formulae Will Not Get A Definite Result Out Of Loose Data.

Science And Literature Are Not Two Things, But Two Sides Of One Thing.

No One Can Help Another Very Much In These Crises Of Life; But Love And Sympathy Count For Something.

My Fundamental Axiom Of Speculative Philosophy Is That Materialism And Spiritualism Are Opposite Poles Of The Same Absurdity-the Absurdity Of Imagining That We Know Anything About Either Spirit Or Matter.

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.

The Great End Of Life Is Not Knowledge But Action.

I Cannot But Think That He Who Finds A Certain Proportion Of Pain And Evil Inseparably Woven Up In The Life Of The Very Worms, Will Bear His Own Share With More Courage And Submission.

And When You Cannot Prove That People Are Wrong, But Only That They Are Absurd, The Best Course Is To Let Them Alone.

Whatever Evil Voices May Rage, Science, Secure Among The Powers That Are Eternal, Will Do Her Work And Be Blessed.

Some Experience Of Popular Lecturing Had Convinced Me That The Necessity Of Making Things Plain To Uninstructed People, Was One Of The Very Best Means Of Clearing Up The Obscure Corners In One's Own Mind.

It Is One Of The Most Saddening Things In Life That, Try As We May, We Can Never Be Certain Of Making People Happy, Whereas We Can Almost Always Be Certain Of Making Them Unhappy.

What Men Of Science Want Is Only A Fair Day's Wages For More Than A Fair Day's Work.

If Every Man Possessed Everything He Wanted, And No One Had The Power To Interfere With Such Possession; Or If No Man Desired Thatwhich Could Damage His Fellow-man, Justice Would Have No Part To Play In The Universe.

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 Séance.

Common Sense Is Science Exactly In So Far As It Fulfills The Ideal Of Common Sense; That Is, Sees Facts As They Are, Or At Any Rate, Without The Distortion Of Prejudice, And Reasons From Them In Accordance With The Dictates Of Sound Judgment. And Science Is Simply Common Sense At Its Best, That Is, Rigidly Accurate In Observation, And Merciless To Fallacy In Logic.

Science Seems To Me To Teach In The Highest And Strongest Manner The Great Truth Which Is Embodied In The Christian Conception Of Entire Surrender To The Will Of God. Sit Down Before Fact As A Little Child, Be Prepared To Give Up Every Preconceived Notion, Follow Humbly Wherever And To Whatever Abysses Nature Leads, Or You Shall Learn Nothing. I Have Only Begun To Learn Content And Peace Of Mind Since I Have Resolved At All Risks To Do This.

Science Commits Suicide When It Adopts A Creed.

It Sounds Paradoxical To Say The Attainment Of Scientific Truth Has Been Effected, To A Great Extent, By The Help Of Scientific Errors.

The Most Considerable Difference I Note Among Men Is Not In Their Readiness To Fall Into Error, But In Their Readiness To Acknowledge These Inevitable Lapses.

The Antagonism Between Science And Religion, About Which We Hear So Much, Appears To Me To Be Purely Factitiousfabricated, On The One Hand, By Short-sighted Religious People Who Confound A Certain Branch Of Science, Theology, With Religion; And, On The Other, By Equally Short-sighted Scientific People Who Forget That Science Takes For Its Province Only That Which Is Susceptible Of Clear Intellectual Comprehension; And That, Outside The Boundaries Of That Province, They Must Be Content With Imagination, With Hope, And With Ignorance

As A Natural Process, Of The Same Character As The Development Of A Tree From Its Seed, Or Of A Fowl From Its Egg, Evolution Excludes Creation And All Other Kinds Of Supernatural Intervention.

Living Things Have No Inertia, And Tend To No Equilibrium.

Veracity Is The Heart Of Morality.

The Question Of All Questions For Humanity, The Problem Which Lies Behind All Others And Is More Interesting Than Any Of Them, Is That Of The Determination Of Man's Place In Nature And His Relation To The Cosmos.

Mix Salt And Sand, And It Shall Puzzle The Wisest Of Men, With His Mere Natural Appliances, To Separate All The Grains Of Sand From All The Grains Of Salt; But A Shower Of Rain Will Effect The Same Object In Ten Minutes.

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.

What Men Need Is, As Much Knowledge As They Can Assimilate And Organize Into A Basis For Action; Give Them More And It May Become Injurious. One Knows People Who Are As Heavy And Stupid From Undigested Learning .

True Science And True Religion Are Twin Sisters, And The Separation Of Either From The Other Is Sure To Prove The Death Of Both. Science Prospers Exactly In Proportion As It Is Religious; And Religion Flourishes In Exact Proportion To The Scientific Depth And Firmness Of Its Basis.

Extinguished Theologians Lie About The Cradle Of Every Science As The Strangled Snakes Beside That Of Hercules; And History Records That Whenever Science And Orthodoxy Have Been Fairly Opposed, The Latter Has Been Forced To Retire From The Lists, Bleeding And Crushed If Not Annihilated; Scotched, If Not Slain.

Proclaim Human Equality As Loudly As You Like, Witless Will Serve His Brother.

Science Is Nothing, But Trained And Organized Common Sense.

The Bible Has Been The Magna Charta Of The Poor And Of The Oppressed.

The Man Of Science Has Learned To Believe In Justification, Not By Faith, But By Verification.

I Care Not What Subject Is Taught, If Only It Be Taught Well.

Extinguished Theologians Lie About The Cradle Of Every Science, As Strangled Snakes Beside That Of Hercules

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.

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. You Learn To Put Your Trust, By And By, In An Economy And Frugality Of The Exercise Of Your Powers, Both Moral And Intellectual; And You Very Soon Find Out, If You Have Not Found It Out Before, That Patience And Tenacity Of Purpose Are Worth More Than Twice Their Weight Of Cleverness.

Misery Is A Match That Never Goes Out.

It Is A Popular Delusion That The Scientific Enquirer Is Under An Obligation Not To Go Beyond Generalisation Of Observed Facts...but Anyone Who Is Practically Acquainted With Scientific Work Is Aware That Those Who Refuse To Go Beyond The Facts, Rarely Get As Far.

My Experience Of The World Is That Things Left To Themselves Don't Get Right.

I Wish You Would Let An Old Man, Who Has Had His Share Of Fighting, Remind You That Battles, Like Hypotheses, Are Not To Be Multiplied Beyond Necessity.

The Man Who Is All Morality And Intellect, Although He May Be Good And Even Great, Is, After All, Only Half A Man.

When I Reached Intellectual Maturity And Began To Ask Myself Whether I Was An Atheist, A Theist, Or A Pantheist; A Materialist, Or An Idealist; A Christian, Or A Freethinker; I Found That The More I Learned And Reflected, The Less Ready Was The Answer; Until, At Last, I Came To The Conclusion That I Had Neither Art Nor Part With Any Of These Denominations, Except The Last.

It May Be Quite True That Some Negroes Are Better Than Some White Men; But No Rational Man, Cognisant Of The Facts, Believes That The Average Negro Is The Equal, Still Less The Superior, Of The Average White Man. And, If This Be True, It Is Simply Incredible That, When All His Disabilities Are Removed, And Our Prognathous Relative Has A Fair Field And No Favour, As Well As No Oppressor, He Will Be Able To Compete Successfully With His Bigger-brained And Smaller-jawed Rival, In A Contest Which Is To Be Carried On By Thoughts And Not By Bites.

It Does Not Matter How Many Tumbles You Have In This Life, So Long As You Do Not Get Dirty When You Tumble; It Is Only The People Who Have To Stop To Be Washed And Made Clean, Who Must Necessarily Lose The Race. And 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

Man's Place In Nature.

Within The Last Fifty Years, The Extraordinary Growth Of Every Department Of Physical Science Has Spread Among Us Mental Food Of So Nutritious And Stimulating A Character That A New Ecdysis Seems Imminent.

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

The Best Men Of The Best Epochs Are Simply Those Who Make The Fewest Blunders And Commit The Fewest Sins.

To A Clear Eye The Smallest Fact Is A Window Through Which The Infinite May Be Seen.

The Mathematician Starts With A Few Propositions, The Proof Of Which Is So Obvious That They Are Called Self-evident, And The Rest Of His Work Consists Of Subtle Deductions From Them. The Teaching Of Languages, At Any Rate As Ordinarily Practiced, Is Of The Same General Nature Authority And Tradition Furnish The Data, And The Mental Operations Are Deductive.

The Only Medicine For Suffering, Crime, And All Other Woes Of Mankind, Is Wisdom. Teach A Man To Read And Write, And You Have Put Into His Hands The Great Keys Of The Wisdom Box. But It Is Quite Another Thing To Open The Box.

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.

The Great Tragedy Of Science - The Slaying Of A Beautiful Hypothesis By An Ugly Fact.

There Is No Greater Mistake Than The Hasty Conclusion That Opinions Are Worthless Because They Are Badly Argued.

A Drop Of Water Is As Powerful As A Thunder-bolt.

Of Moral Purpose I See No Trace In Nature. That Is An Article Of Exclusively Human Manufacture And Very Much To Our Credit.

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?

I Took Thought, And Invented What I Conceived To Be The Appropriate Title Of 'agnostic'.

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

All Truth, In The Long Run, Is Only Common Sense Clarified.

Of The Few Innocent Pleasures Left To Men Past Middle Life, The Jamming Of Common Sense Down The Throats Of Fools Is Perhaps The Keenest.

Logical Consequences Are The Scarecrows Of Fools And The Beacons Of Wise Men.

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.

Cherish [science], Venerate Her, Follow Her Methods Faithfully ... And The Future Of This People Will Be Greater Than The Past.

'infidel' Is A Term Of Reproach, Which Christians And Mohammedans, In Their Modesty, Agree To Apply To Those Who Differ From Them.

There Is The Greatest Practical Benefit In Making A Few Failures Early In Life.

We Are Prone To See What Lies Behind Our Eyes, Rather Than What Apprears Before Them.

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.

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