A man's worst difficulties begin when he is able to do as he likes.

- Thomas Henry Huxley

That mysterious independent variable of political calculation, Public Opinion.

- Thomas Henry Huxley

The sense of uselessness is the severest shock which our system can sustain.

- Thomas Henry Huxley

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. We know that his play is always fair, just, and patient. But also we know, to our cost, that he never overlooks a mistake, or makes the smallest allowance for ignorance.

- Thomas Henry Huxley

Sit down before fact like a little child, and be prepared to give up every preconceived notion, follow humbly wherever and to whatever abyss Nature leads, or you shall learn nothing.

- Thomas Henry Huxley

This seems to be one of the many cases in which the admitted accuracy of mathematical processes is allowed to throw a wholly inadmissible appearance of authority over the results obtained by them. Mathematics may be compared to a mill of exquisite workmanship, which grinds your stuff to any degree of fineness; but, nevertheless, what you get out depends on what you put in; and as the grandest mill in the world will not extract wheat flour from peascods, so pages of formulae will not get a definite result out of loose data.

- Thomas Henry Huxley

A world of facts lies outside and beyond the world of words.

- Thomas Henry Huxley

It is the first duty of a hypothesis to be intelligible.

- Thomas Henry Huxley

Mathematics may be compared to a mill of exquisite workmanship, which grinds your stuff to any degree of fineness; but, nevertheless, what you get out depends on what you put in.

- Thomas Henry Huxley

Irrationally held truths may be more harmful than reasoned errors.

- Thomas Henry Huxley