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.
Thomas Henry Huxley
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Thomas Henry Huxley quotes
The great tragedy of science - the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact.
Science is organized common sense where many a beautiful theory was killed by an ugly fact.
Science is simply common sense at its best, that is, rigidly accurate in observation, and merciless to fallacy in logic.
All truth, in the long run, is only common sense clarified.
Books are the money of Literature, but only the counters of Science.
Every great advance in natural knowledge has involved the absolute rejection of authority.
Fact I know; and Law I know; but what is this Necessity, save an empty shadow of my own mind's throwing?
Freedom and order are not incompatible... truth is strength... free discussion is the very life of truth.
I am content with nothing, restless and ambitious... and I despise myself for the vanity, which formed half the stimulus to my exertions. Oh would that I were one of those plodding wise fools who having once set their hand to the plough go on nothing doubting.
I do not say think as I think, but think in my way. Fear no shadows, least of all in that great spectre of personal unhappiness which binds half the world to orthodoxy.
I took thought, and invented what I conceived to be the appropriate title of `agnostic'.
If a little knowledge is dangerous, where is the man who has so much as to be out of danger?
In scientific work, those who refuse to go beyond fact rarely get as far as fact.
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.
It is not who is right, but what is right, that is of importance.
Learn what is true in order to do what is right.
Logical consequences are the scarecrows of fools and the beacons of wise men.
Patience and tenacity of purpose are worth more than twice their weight of cleverness.
Science is nothing, but trained and organized common sense.
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.
The Bible has been the Magna Carta of the poor and of the oppressed.
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 medieval university looked backwards; it professed to be a storehouse of old knowledge. The modern university looks forward, and is a factory of new knowledge.
The results of political changes are hardly ever those which their friends hope or their foes fear.
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.
The ultimate court of appeal is observation and experiment... not authority.
The world makes up for all its follies and injustices by being damnably sentimental.
There is the greatest practical benefit in making a few failures early in life.
Try to learn something about everything and everything about something.
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