Thomas Huxley Quotes

Everyone here would die for the sake of truth. Everyone here lies constantly for the tiniest chance of personal gain. This is what it means to be a scientist.

A man has no reason to be ashamed of having an ape for his grandfather. If there were an ancestor whom I should feel shame in recalling it would rather be a man who plunges into scientific questions with which he has no real acquaintance, only to obscure them by an aimless rhetoric.

Let no man turn aside, ever so slightly, from the broad path of honour, on the plausible pretence that he is justified by the goodness of his end. All good ends can be worked out by good means.

Absolutely speaking, Do unto others as you would that they should do unto you is by no means a golden rule, but the best of current silver. An honest man would have but little occasion for it. It is golden not to have any rule at all in such a case.

In the 17 years since I graduated from this great College of Law, I have seen that, for many of us, it becomes increasingly easy to rationalize our actions in the name of expediency when facing difficult decisions-to choose a path where the ends justify the means. I want to ask you to challenge Machiavelli's philosophy. I want to humbly suggest that you be the guardians of a more complicated truth: that the means are as important-and sometimes even more important-than the ends.

In the long run, you can never accomplish a worthy end with an unworthy means.

Integrity means having the courage to do what is right, and what is aligned with your values, no matter the situation.

I've never been mean-spirited, in my opinion. I never did anything below the belt.

Fairness means not to use fraud and trickery in the exchange of commodities and services and the exchange of feelings.

A Warrior knows that the ends do not justify the means. Because there are no ends, there are only means.

Living with integrity means... behaving in ways that are in harmony with your personal values.

Integrity means you do what you do because it is right and not just fashionable or politically correct.

An educated person must learn to act justly, beginning, first of all, with his thoughts, then later in his deeds. That is what it means to be educated.

We will never have peace in the world until men everywhere recognize that ends are not cut off from means, because the means represent the ideal in the making, and the end in process, and ultimately you can't reach good ends through evil means, because the means represent the seed and the end represents the tree.

Knowing what's right doesn't mean much unless you do what's right.

So I have tried to make it clear that it is wrong to use immoral means to attain moral ends. But now I must affirm that it is just as wrong, or even more so, to use moral means to preserve immoral ends.

I seek no values by means of evil, nor do I surrender my values to evil.

Great men's honor ought always to be measured by the methods they made use of in attaining it.

It is impossible for someone to lie unless he thinks he knows the truth. Producing bullshit requires no such conviction.

Give up money, give up fame, give up science, give the earth itself and all it contains rather than do an immoral act. And never suppose that in any possible situation, or under any circumstances, it is best for you to do a dishonorable thing, however slightly so it may appear to you.

Your Integrity is more important than your immediate Life.

It has sunk him, I cannot say how much it has sunk him in my opinion. So unlike what a man should be!-None of that upright integrity, that strict adherence to truth and principle, that distain of trick and littleness, which a man should display in every transaction of his life.

He deserves praise who does not what he may, but what he ought.

Corruption wins not more than honesty.

In the worst of times the best among us never lose their moral compass, and that is how they emerge relatively unscathed.