Thomas Huxley Quotes

The beauty of interdisciplinary conversation is that the mode of expression is essentially different for each practitioner, even if ideas are shared.

All ideas grow out of other ideas.

What I like best is sitting in a room together with really smart engineers thinking about a problem.

No form of human exchange is more profitable than the exchange of ideas. If I give you a thought in return for one of your thoughts, each of us will have gained a 100 percent dividend.

Real learning comes about when the competitive spirit has ceased.

A teacher can never truly teach unless he is still learning himself. A lamp can never light another lamp unless it continues to burn its own flame. The teacher who has come to the end of his subject, who has no living traffic with his knowledge but merely repeats his lesson to his students, can only load their minds, he cannot quicken them.

There is so much to teach, and the time goes so fast.

Every man of sound brain whom you meet knows something worth knowing better than yourself. A man, on the whole, is a better preceptor than a book. But what scholar does not allow that the dullest book can suggest to him a new and a sound idea?

I think the reason that a lot of people have to have a lot of people around is just about being smart and knowing what you want to talk about.

But why,... if you have a serious comment to make on the real life of men, must you do it by talking about a phantasmagoric never-never land of your own? Because, I take it, one of the main things the author wants to say is that the real life of men is of that mythical and heroic quality.

The mind of one meditating on a single object becomes one-pointed. And one-pointedness of mind leads to abidance in the self. Real attainment is to be fully conscious, to be aware of surroundings and the people around, to move among them all, but not to merge consciousness in the environment. One should remain in inner independent awareness.

I think there are a lot of people who feel very passionate about needing to have an open debate. And I think it's a real sign of leadership that the press needs to be actually standing up for that.

The case for my life... is this: that I have added something to knowledge, and helped others to add more

Those who are pure in heart and single in purpose are able to understand the most supreme Way. It is like polishing a mirror, which becomes bright when the dust is removed. Remove your passions, and have no hankering.

I'm hoping to learn something new every day. It sounds corny, but I really do come in here every day, listening and talking with the veteran guys and seeing what I can absorb.

To face calamity with a mind as unclouded as may be, and quickly to react against it-that in a city and in an individual-is real strength.

If we get away from the lazy and fuzzy thinking that is like a poison in our society - if we get away from all the bad television that we tend to watch - and begin to take up serious meditation and other sacred exercises, we will have a real revolution of consciousness. If that happens, the world will change by itself.

One way to eliminate self negating thoughts and behavior is by gaining more understanding through realizing that you cannot force others to see that what you feel is real.

There's this overly friendly sense of community built up by very isolated people, and there's this Lutheran humbleness that keeps people from talking about their own feelings and asking about yours. What does that do in this modern age where everyone takes pictures of their food, and they share every thought they've ever had in real time?

My job is to help people see what I see. If it's of value, fine. And, if it's not of value, then at least I've done what I can do.

People talk of situations, read books, repeat quotations.

I had a real epiphany. I guess it was during and after the operation. I did what's a common thing; I kind of raised above the table and could look at me and listen to all the people talking and understand what they were saying and so forth.

The love of solitude, when cultivated in the morn of life, elevates the mind to a noble independence, but to acquire the advantages which solitude is capable of affording, the mind must not be impelled to it by melancholy and discontent, but by a real distaste to the idle pleasures of the world, a rational contempt for the deceitful joys of life, and just apprehensions of being corrupted and seduced by its insinuating and destructive gayeties.

Talking over the things which you have read with your companions fixes them on the mind.

Every game we play activates our brain, and it's the same brain we have in real life as we have in the game.