Thomas Huxley

"Learn what is true in order to do what is right."

"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."

"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 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."

"Logical consequences are the scarecrows of fools and the beacons of wise men."

"Proclaim human equality as loudly as you like, Witless will serve his brother."

"Science and literature are not two things, but two sides of one thing."

"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."

"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 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."

"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."

"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."

"Try to learn something about everything and everything about something."