Thomas Huxley Quotes

When blithe to argument I come, Though armed with facts, and merry, May Providence protect me from The fool as adversary, Whose mind to him a kingdom is Where reason lacks dominion, Who calls conviction prejudice And prejudice opinion.

To admit one's own presuppositions and to point out the presuppositions of others is therefore to maintain that all reasoning is, in the nature of the case, circular reasoning. The starting-point, the method, and the conclusion are always involved in one another.

There is no greater mistake in the world than the looking upon every sort of nonsense as want of sense.

I hope you become comfortable with the use of logic without being deceived into concluding that logic will inevitably lead you to the correct conclusion.

Those who, in debate, appeal to their qualifications, argue from memory, not from understanding.

He who knows only his own side of the case (argument) knows little of that. His reasons may be good, and no one may have been able to refute them. But if he is equally unable to refute the reasons on the opposite side, if he does not so much as know what they are, he has no ground for preferring either opinion

False conclusions which have been reasoned out are infinitely worse than blind impulse.

When people disagreed with him he urged them to be objective.

Intelligent people make many mistakes because they cannot believe the world is really as foolish as it is.

Men first make up their minds (and the smaller the mind the sooner made up), and then seek for the reasons; and if they chance to stumble upon a good reason, of course they do not reject it. But though they are right, they are only right by chance.

Stupidity lies in wanting to draw conclusions.

If you jump to conclusions, you make terrible landings.

If an outsider perceives 'something wrong' with a core scientific model, the humble and justified response of that curious outsider should be to ask 'what mistake am I making?' before assuming 100% of the experts are wrong.

There is an almost universal tendency, perhaps an inborn tendency, to suspect the good faith of a man who holds opinions that differ from our own opinions. It obviously endangers the freedom and the objectivity of our discussion if we attack a person instead of attacking an opinion or, more precisely, a theory.

All reasoning ends in an appeal to self-evidence.

The most important factor in the training of good mental habits consists in acquiring the attitude of suspended conclusion, and in mastering the various methods of searching for new materials to corroborate or to refute the first suggestions that occur.

Opinions should be formed with great caution, and changed with greater.

When friends and acquaintances are telling you [that] you are a genius, before you accept their opinion, take a moment to remember what you always thought of their opinions in the past.

Our mistake is not that we take our theories too seriously, but that we do not take them seriously enough.

The specialist is one who never makes small mistakes while moving toward the grand fallacy.

Sometimes you can see things happen right in front of your eyes and still jump to the wrong conclusions.

It is a vast, and pervasive, cognitive mistake to assume that people who agree with you (or disagree) do so on the same criteria that you care about.

What we do in every other area of our lives (other than religion), is, rather than respect somebody's beliefs, we evaluate their reasons.

One must not mistake majority for truth.

Most often people seek in life occasions for persisting in their opinions rather than for educating themselves.