Thomas Huxley

Education is the instruction of the intellect in the laws of Nature, under which name I include not merely things and their forces, but men and their ways; and the fashioning of the affections and of the will into an earnest and loving conformity with those laws.

The great object of education is to train the mind to use its own powers.

The history of science is the history of the gradual discovery of the fact that the world is not governed by caprice, but by law.

I have been a man of science for forty years, and I have never seen a miracle.

The only way to learn is to do.

The world is a great machine, and we are all parts of it.

The great lesson of the nineteenth century is that the world is governed by law, and not by caprice.

The great tragedy of Science — the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact.

Science is nothing but trained and organized common sense.

I am too much of a skeptic to deny the possibility of anything.

Every man who has the interests of science at heart should protest against the idea that it is the duty of the State to support any investigation.

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.

Irrationality is the square root of all evil.

If a little knowledge is dangerous, where is the man who has so much as to be safe?

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.

Veracity is the heart of morality.

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 wound up every morning before I got out of bed, I should instantly close with the offer.

The world is neither wise nor just; it is neither good nor bad. It is what it is.

Education is the instruction of the intellect in the laws of Nature, under which name I include not merely things and their forces, but men 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 took thought, and invented what I conceived to be the appropriate title of 'agnostic'.