Thomas Huxley

In scientific work, those who refuse to go beyond facts, rarely get as far as facts.

The ultimate court of appeal is observation and experiment... not authority.

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.

The scientific spirit is of more value than its products.

Size is not grandeur, and territory does not make a nation.

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.

Make up your mind to act decidedly and take the consequences. No good is ever done in this world by hesitation.

The doctrine that all men are, in any sense, or have been, in any sense, free and equal, is an utterly baseless fiction.

Freedom and order are not incompatible... the true difficulty is to combine them.

I would rather be a slave to impersonal necessity than to any master.

The immortality of the soul is a matter which is of so little consequence to us, and the prospects of personal happiness are so dark.

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 is organized knowledge. Wisdom is organized life.

The known is finite, the unknown infinite; intellectually we stand on an islet in the midst of an illimitable ocean of inexplicability.

To a person uninstructed in natural history, his 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.

I assert that the problem of the origin of all things is insoluble by us, and that we must acquit ourselves as best we may of our responsibilities in the household of Nature.

The results of science are never final; they are provisional and subject to revision.

It is not who is right, but what is right, that is of importance.

Patience and tenacity are worth more than twice their weight of cleverness.

Learn at least the fundamentals of science, that you may talk intelligently of the epoch-making problem of evolution.