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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.

-Thomas Huxley

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I Have Always Been,

Thomas Huxley

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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.

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

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.

My Reflection, When I First Made Myself Master Of The Central Idea Of The 'origin', Was, 'how Extremely Stupid Not To Have Thought Of That!'

Science Commits Suicide When It Adopts A Creed.

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.

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.

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

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

Self Confidence

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

The Doctrine That All Men Are, In Any Sense, Or Have Been, At Any Time, Free And Equal, Is An Utterly Baseless Fiction.

The Great End Of Life Is Not Knowledge But Action.

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

From The Dawn Of Exact Knowledge To The Present Day, Observation, Experiment, And Speculation Have Gone Hand In Hand; And, Whenever Science Has Halted Or Strayed From The Right Path, It Has Been, Either Because Its Votaries Have Been Content With Mere Unverified Or Unverifiable Speculation (and This Is The Commonest Case, Because Observation And Experiment Are Hard Work, While Speculation Is Amusing); Or It Has Been, Because The Accumulation Of Details Of Observation Has For A Time Excluded Speculation.

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.

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

Only A Scientific People Can Survive In A Scientific Future.

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

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.

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.

[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.

In Truth, The Laboratory Is The Forecourt Of The Temple Of Philosophy, And Whoso Has Not Offered Sacrifices And Undergone Purification There Has Little Chance Of Admission Into The Sanctuary.

Not Only Does Every Animal Live At The Expense Of Some Other Animal Or Plant, But The Very Plants Are At War.... The Individuals Of A Species Are Like The Crew Of A Foundered Ship, And None But Good Swimmers Have A Chance Of Reaching The Land.

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.

We Live In A World Which Is Full Of Misery And Ignorance, And The Plain Duty Of Each And All Of Us Is To Try To Make The Little Corner He Can Influence Somewhat Less Miserable And Somewhat Less Ignorant Than It Was Before He Entered.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

Try To Learn Something About Everything And Everything About Something.

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.

People Never Will Recollect That Mere Learning And Mere Cleverness Are Of Next To No Value In Life, While Energy And Intellectual Grip, The Things That Are Inborn And Cannot Be Taught, Are Everything.

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

I Know No Study Which Is So Unutterably Saddening As That Of The Evolution Of Humanity, As It Is Set Forth In The Annals Of History. Out Of The Darkness Of Prehistoric Ages Man Emerges With The Marks Of His Lowly Origin Strong Upon Him. He Is A Brute, Only More Intelligent Than The Other Brutes, A Blind Prey To Impulses, Which As Often As Not Led Him To Destruction; A Victim To Endless Illusions, Which Make His Mental Existence A Terror And A Burden, And Fill His Physical Life With Barren Toil And Battle.

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

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.

Science Is Simply Common Sense At Its Best, That Is, Rigidly Accurate In Observation, And Merciless To Fallacy In Logic.

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.

Thoughtfulness For Others, Generosity, Modesty, And Self-respect Are The Qualities Which Make A Real Gentleman Or Lady.

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

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.

I Know Of No Department Of Natural Science More Likely To Reward A Man Who Goes Into It Thoroughly Than Anthropology. There Is An Immense Deal To Be Done In The Science Pure And Simple, And It Is One Of Those Branches Of Inquiry Which Brings One Into Contact With The Great Problems Of Humanity In Every Direction.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

I Believe That History Might Be, And Ought To Be, Taught In A New Fashion So As To Make The Meaning Of It As A Process Of Evolution Intelligible To The Young.

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.

Social Progress Means A Checking Of The Cosmic Process At Every Step And The Substitution For It Of Another, Which May Be Called The Ethical Process; The End Of Which Is Not The Survival Of Those Who May Happen To Be The Fittest, In Respect Of The Whole Of The Conditions Which Obtain, But Of Those Who Are Ethically The Best.

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.

Man's Place In Nature.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

Science Is Simply Common Sense At Its Best.

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.

In Matters Of The Intellect, Do Not Pretend That Conclusions Are Certain Which Are Not Demonstrated Or Demonstrable. That I Take To Be The Agnostic Faith, Which If A Man Keep Whole And Undefiled, He Shall Not Be Ashamed To Look The Universe In The Face, Whatever The Future May Have In Store For Him.

The Only People, Scientific Or Other, Who Never Make Mistakes Are Those Who Do Nothing.

Making Mistakes

Whatever Part Of The Animal Fabric Whatever Series Of Muscles, Whatever Viscera Might Be Selected For Comparison The Result Would Be The Same The Lower Apes And The Gorilla Would Differ More Than The Gorilla And The Man.

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

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.

Science Reckons Many Prophets, But There Is Not Even A Promise Of A Messiah.

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.

To Quarrel With The Uncertainty That Besets Us In Intellectual Affairs Would Be About As Reasonable As To Object To Live One's Life With Due Thought For The Morrow Because No Man Can Be Sure He Will Alive An Hour Hence.

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?

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

The Method Of Scientific Investigation Is Nothing But The Expression Of The Necessary Mode Of Working Of The Human Mind.

Scientific Method

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

What Would Become Of The Garden If The Gardener Treated All The Weeds And Slugs And Birds And Trespassers As He Would Like To Be Treated, If He Were In Their Place?

Our Reverence For The Nobility Of Manhood Will Not Be Lessened By The Knowledge That Man Is In Substance And In Structure, One With The Brutes; For He Alone Possesses The Marvellous Endowment Of Intelligible And Rational Speech Whereby He Has Slowly Accumulated And Organized The Experience Which Is Almost Wholly Lost With The Cessation Of Individual Life In Other Animals; So That He Now Stands Raised Above It As On A Mountain-top, Far Above The Level Of His Humble Fellows, And Transfigured From His Grosser Nature By Reflecting, Here And There, A Ray From The Infinite Source Of Truth.

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

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

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.

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

Ecclesiasticism In Science Is Only Unfaithfulness To Truth

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

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.

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 .

Unity Of Plan Everywhere Lies Hidden Under The Mask: Of Diversity Of Structure-the Complex Is Everywhere Evolved Out Of The Simple.

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.

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

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

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

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

Veracity Is The Heart Of Morality.

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.

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.

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.

For Myself I Say Deliberately, It Is Better To Have A Millstone Tied Round The Neck And Be Thrown Into The Sea Than To Share The Enterprises Of Those To Whom The World Has Turned, And Will Turn, Because They Minister To Its Weaknesses And Cover Up The Awful Realities Which It Shudders To Look At.

It May Be Well To Remember That The Highest Level Of Moral Aspiration Recorded In History Was Reached By A Few Ancient Jews--micah, Isaiah, And The Rest--who Took No Count Whatever Of What Might Not Happen To Them After Death. It Is Not Obvious To Me Why The Same Point Should Not By And By Be Reached By The Gentiles.

Irrationally Held Truths May Be More Harmful Than Reasoned Errors.

Even In The Important Matter Of Cranial Capacity, Men Differ More Widely From One Another Than They Do From The Apes; While The Lowest Apes Differ As Much, In Proportion, From The Highest, As The Latter Does From Man.

I Have Never Had The Least Sympathy With The A Priori Reasons Against Orthodoxy, And I Have By Nature And Disposition The Greatest Possible Antipathy To All The Atheistic And Infidel School. Nevertheless I Know That I Am, In Spite Of Myself, Exactly What The Christian Would Call, And, So Far As I Can See, Is Justified In Calling, Atheist And Infidel.

It Is Wrong For A Man To Say That He Is Certain Of The Objective Truth Of Any Proposition Unless He Can Produce Evidence Which Logically Justifies That Certainty. This Is What Agnosticism Asserts; And, In My Opinion, It Is All That Is Essential To Agnosticism. That Which Agnostics Deny And Repudiate, As Immoral, Is The Contrary Doctrine, That There Are Propositions Which Men Ought To Believe Without Logically Satisfactory Evidence; And That Reprobation Ought To Attach To The Profession Of Disbelief In Such Inadequately Supported Propositions.

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

I Conceive That The Leading Characteristic Of The Nineteenth Century Has Been The Rapid Growth Of The Scientific Spirit, The Consequent Application Of Scientific Methods Of Investigation To All The Problems With Which The Human Mind Is Occupied, And The Correlative Rejection Of Traditional Beliefs Which Have Proved Their Incompetence To Bear Such Investigation.

People May Talk About Intellectual Teaching, But What We Principally Want Is The Moral Teaching.

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

Absolute Certainty

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

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

Natural Knowledge, Seeking To Satisfy Natural Wants, Has Found The Ideas Which Can Alone Still Spiritual Cravings. I Say That Natural Knowledge, In Desiring To Ascertain The Laws Of Comfort, Has Been Driven To Discover Those Of Conduct, And To Lay The Foundations Of A New Morality.

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.

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

Though Under-instruction Is A Bad Thing, It Is Not Impossible That Over-instruction May Be Worse.

Fact I Know; And Law I Know; But What Is This Necessity, Save An Empty Shadow Of My Own Mind's Throwing?

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

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

The Rung Of A Ladder Was Never Meant To Rest Upon, But Only To Hold A Man's Foot Long Enough To Enable Him To Put The Other Somewhat Higher.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

The Only Question Which Any Wise Man Can Ask Himself, And Which Any Honest Man Will Ask Himself, Is Whether A Doctrine Is True Or False.

If Then, Said I, The Question Is Put To Me Would I Rather Have A Miserable Ape For A Grandfather Or A Man Highly Endowed By Nature And Possessing Great Means And Influence And Yet Who Employs Those Faculties For The Mere Purpose Of Introducing Ridicule Into A Grave Scientific Discussion-i Unhesitatingly Affirm My Preference For The Ape.

The Supernatural Is Being Swept Out Of The Universe In The Flood Of New Knowledge Of What Is Natural. It Will Soon Be As Impossible For An Intelligent, Educated Man Or Woman To Believe In A God As It Is Now To Believe That Earth Is Flat, That Flies Can Be Spontaneously Generated, That Disease Is A Divine Punishment, Or That Death Is Always Due To Witchcraft.

Genius, As An Explosive Power, Beats Gunpowder Hollow.

Misery Is A Match That Never Goes Out.

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

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

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

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?

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

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.

The Results Of Political Changes Are Hardly Ever Those Which Their Friends Hope Or Their Foes Fear.

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?

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

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

No Slavery Can Be Abolished Without A Double Emancipation, And The Master Will Benefit By Freedom More Than The Freed-man.

Double Standard

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.

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

The Ultimate Court Of Appeal Is Observation And Experiment... Not Authority.

Regarded Anatomically, The Resemblances Between The Foot Of Man And The Foot Of The Gorilla Are Far More Striking And Important Than The Differences... Be The Differences Between The Hand And Foot Of Man And Those Of The Gorilla What They May The Differences Between Those Of The Gorilla And Those Of The Lower Apes Are Much Greater.

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.

The Known Is Finite, The Unknown Infinite; Intellectually We Stand On An Islet In The Midst Of An Illimitable Ocean Of Inexplicability. Our Business In Every Generation Is To Reclaim A Little More Land, To Add Something To The Extent And The Solidity Of Our Possessions.

Matter And Force Are The Two Names Of The One Artist Who Fashions The Living As Well As The Lifeless.

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

The Doctrine Of Transmigration Was A Means Of Constructing A Plausible Vindication Of The Ways Of The Cosmos To Man; None But Very Hasty Thinkers Will Reject It On The Grounds Of Inherent Absurdity.

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

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.

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.

The Only Objections That Have Occurred To Me Are, 1st That You Have Loaded Yourself With An Unnecessary Difficulty In Adopting Natura Non Facit Saltum So Unreservedly. . . . And 2nd, It Is Not Clear To Me Why, If Continual Physical Conditions Are Of So Little Moment As You Suppose, Variation Should Occur At All. However, I Must Read The Book Two Or Three Times More Before I Presume To Begin Picking Holes.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

The Thief And The Murderer Follow Nature Just As Much As The Philanthropist.

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.

It Is Wrong For A Man To Say That He Is Certain Of The Objective Truth Of Any Proposition Unless He Can Produce Evidence Which Logically Justifies That Certainty.

Objective Truth

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

Life Is Too Short To Occupy Oneself With The Slaying Of The Slain More Than Once.

Life Is Too Short

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

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.

I'd Rather Have An Ape For An Ancestor Than A Bishop.

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

Agnosticism Is Not Properly Described As A "negative" Creed, Nor Indeed As A Creed Of Any Kind, Except In So Far As It Expresses Absolute Faith In The Validity Of A Principle Which Is As Much Ethical As Intellectual.

Science Has Fulfilled Her Function When She Has Ascertained And Enunciated Truth.

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

Authority And Power

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

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

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.

The Sceptics End In The Infidelity Which Asserts The Problem To Be Insoluble, Or In The Atheism Which Denies The Existence Of Any Orderly Progress And Governance Of Things: The Men Of Genius Propound Solutions Which Grow Into Systems Of Theology Or Of Philosophy, Or Veiled In Musical Language Which Suggests More Than It Asserts, Take The Shape Of The Poetry Of An Epoch.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

... 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.

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.

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.

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.

Without Seeing Any Reason To Believe That Women Are, On The Average, So Strong Physically, Intellectually, Or Morally, As Men, I Cannot Shut My Eyes To The Fact That Many Women Are Much Better Endowed In All These Respects Than Many Men, And I Am At A Loss To Understand On What Grounds Of Justice Or Public Policy A Career Which Is Open To The Weakest And Most Foolish Of The Male Sex Should Be Forcibly Closed To Women Of Vigor And Capacity.

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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