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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.

-Thomas Huxley

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People Never Will Recollect

Thomas Huxley

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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.

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There Is No Absurdity In Theology So Great That You Cannot Parallel It By A Greater Absurdity In Nature.

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

There Is Nothing Of Permanent Value (putting Aside A Few Human Affections) Nothing That Satisfies Quiet Reflection--except The Sense Of Having Worked According To One's Capacity And Light To Make Things Clear And Get Rid Of Cant And Shams Of All Sorts.

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

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.

Science Is Organized Common Sense Where Many A Beautiful Theory Was Killed By An Ugly Fact.

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

As I Have Already Urged, The Practice Of That Which Is Ethically Best - What We Call Goodness Or Virtue - Involves A Course Of Conduct Which, In All Respects, Is Opposed To That Which Leads To Success In The Cosmic Struggle For Existence. In Place Of Ruthless Selfassertion It Demands Self-restraint; In Place Of Thrusting Aside, Or Treading Down, All Competitors, It Requires That The Individual Shall Not Merely Respect , But Shall Help His Fellows. It Repudiates The Gladiatorial Theory Of Existence. Laws And Moral Precepts Are Directed To The End Of Curbing The Cosmic Process.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

The World Is Neither Wise Nor Just, But It Makes Up For All Its Folly And Injustice By Being Damnably Sentimental.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

Life Is Too Short

Only A Scientific People Can Survive In A Scientific Future.

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.

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 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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

Making Mistakes

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

Veracity Is The Heart Of Morality.

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.

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.

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.

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

Ecclesiasticism In Science Is Only Unfaithfulness To Truth

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

Next To Being Right In This World, The Best Of All Things Is To Be Clearly And Definitely Wrong, Because You Will Come Out Somewhere. If You Go Buzzing About Between Right And Wrong, Vibrating And Fluctuating, You Come Out Nowhere; But If You Are Absolutely And Thoroughly And Persistently Wrong, You Must, Some Of These Days, Have The Extreme Good Fortune Of Knocking Your Head Against A Fact, And That Sets You All Straight Again.

Surely It Must Be Plain That An Ingenious Man Could Speculate Without End On Both Sides, And Find Analogies For All His Dreams. Nor Does It Help Me To Tell Me That The Aspirations Of Mankind

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

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

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.

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.

I Am Not Afraid Of The Priests In The Long-run. Scientific Method Is The White Ant Which Will Slowly But Surely Destroy Their Fortifications. And The Importance Of Scientific Method In Modern Practical Life--always Growing And Increasing--is The Guarantee For The Gradual Emancipation Of The Ignorant Upper And Lower Classes, The Former Of Whom Especially Are The Strength Of The Priests.

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.

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.

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

Expanding Universe

Science Is Nothing, But Trained And Organized Common Sense.

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.

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

Absolute Certainty

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.

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

Education Is The Instruction Of The Intellect In The Laws Of Nature.

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.

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.

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.

Science Commits Suicide When It Adopts A Creed.

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.

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

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

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.

Try To Learn Something About Everything And Everything About Something.

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.

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.

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

Double Standard

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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!'

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

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

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

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

Science Is Simply Common Sense At Its Best.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

Man's Place In Nature.

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

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

[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.

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.

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

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

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

Scientific Method

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.

Learn What Is True In Order To Do What Is 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.

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

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.

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

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 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.

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 .

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.

A Man's Worst Difficulties Begin When He Is Able To Do As He Likes.

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.

As If To Demonstrate, By A Striking Example, The Impossibility Of Erecting Any Cerebral Barrier Between Man And The Apes, Nature Has Provided Us, In The Latter Animals, With An Almost Complete Series Of Gradations From Brains Little Higher Than That Of A Rodent, To Brains Little Lower Than That Of Man.

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

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 The Hypothesis Of Evolution Is True, Living Matter Must Have Arisen From Non-living Matter; For By The Hypothesis The Condition Of The Globe Was At One Time Such, That Living Matter Could Not Have Existed In It, Life Being Entirely Incompatible With The Gaseous State.

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

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?

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.

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?

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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?

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

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.

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

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.

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

The Vast Results Obtained By Science Are Won By No Mystical Faculties, By No Mental Processes Other Than Those Which Are Practicedby Every One Of Us, In The Humblest And Meanest Affairs Of Life. A Detective Policeman Discovers A Burglar From The Marks Made By His Shoe, By A Mental Process Identical With That By Which Cuvier Restored The Extinct Animals Of Montmartre From Fragments Of Their Bones.

Scientific Method

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

Irrationally Held Truths May Be More Harmful Than Reasoned Errors.

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

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.

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

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