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.
— Thomas Huxley
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.
Of moral purpose I see no trace in Nature. That is an article of exclusively human manufacture and very much to our credit.
No delusion is greater than the notion that method and industry can make up for lack of mother-wit, either in science or in practical life.
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.
Nothing can be more incorrect than the assumption one sometimes meets with, that physics has one method, chemistry another, and biology a third.
The scientific imagination always restrains itself within the limits of probability.
No slavery can be abolished without a double emancipation, and the master will benefit by freedom more than the freed-man.
Irrationally held truths may be more harmful than reasoned errors.
It is the customary fate of new truths, to begin as heresies, and to end as superstitions.
Science and literature are not two things, but two sides of one thing.
My experience of the world is that things left to themselves don't get right.
Science has fulfilled her function when she has ascertained and enunciated truth.
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 protest that if some great Power would agree to make me always think what is true and do what is right, on condition of being turned into a sort of clock and would up every morning before I got out of bed, I should instantly close with the offer.
The great thing in the world is not so much to seek happiness as to earn peace and self-respect.
Every great advance in natural knowledge has involved the absolute rejection of authority.
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.
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.
Make up your mind to act decidedly and take the consequences. No good is ever done in this world by hesitation.
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.
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.
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.
It is not to be forgotten that what we call rational grounds for our beliefs are often extremely irrational attempts to justify our instincts.
Ecclesiasticism in science is only unfaithfulness to truth.
Proclaim human equality as loudly as you like, Witless will serve his brother.
The scientific spirit is of more value than its products, and irrationally held truths may be more harmful than reasoned errors.
Economy does not lie in sparing money, but in spending it wisely.
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.
Science commits suicide when it adopts a creed.
There is but one right, and the possibilities of wrong are infinite.
The doctrine that all men are, in any sense, or have been, at any time, free and equal, is an utterly baseless fiction.
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.
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.
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.
My business is to teach my aspirations to confirm themselves to fact, not to try and make facts harmonize with my aspirations.
History warns us that it is the customary fate of new truths to begin as heresies and to end as superstitions.
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.
Size is not grandeur, and territory does not make a nation.
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.
Patience and tenacity are worth more than twice their weight of cleverness.
Misery is a match that never goes out.
Time, whose tooth gnaws away everything else, is powerless against truth.
Teach a child what is wise, that is morality. Teach him what is wise and beautiful, that is religion!
The best men of the best epochs are simply those who make the fewest blunders and commit the fewest sins.
Science reckons many prophets, but there is not even a promise of a Messiah.
The man of science has learned to believe in justification, not by faith, but by verification.
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.
Surely there is a time to submit to guidance and a time to take one's own way at all hazards.
Books are the money of Literature, but only the counters of Science.
