It is wrong for a man to say that he is certain of the objective truth of any proposition unless he can produce evidence which logically justifies that certainty.
Thomas HuxleyRead
I do not say think as I think, but think in my way. Fear no shadows, least of all in that great spectre of personal unhappiness which binds half the world to orthodoxy.
Interpretation
Embrace individuality in thought and challenge conventional norms to avoid personal unhappiness.
Thomas Huxley's quote emphasizes the importance of original thinking and the courage to forge one's own path rather than conforming to societal expectations. He warns against being bound by the shadows of conventional beliefs, which can lead to widespread unhappiness, advocating instead for a more personal and distinctive approach to understanding life and its challenges.
In practice
In a motivational speech about embracing individuality and creativity.
It is wrong for a man to say that he is certain of the objective truth of any proposition unless he can produce evidence which logically justifies that certainty.
The child who has been taught to make an accurate elevation, plan, and section of a pint pot has had an admirable training in accuracy of eye and hand.
Let us have "sweet girl graduates" by all means. They will be none the less sweet for a little wisdom; and the "golden hair" will not curl less gracefully outside the head by reason of there being brains within.
The secret of genius is to carry the spirit of childhood into maturity.
It is the first duty of a hypothesis to be intelligible.
Of the few innocent pleasures left to men past middle life, the jamming of common sense down the throats of fools is perhaps the keenest.
Men speak of dreaming as if it were a phenomenon of night and sleep. They should know better. All results achieved by us are self-promised, and all self-promises are made in dreams awake. Dreaming is the relief of labor,the wine that sustains us in act. We learn to love labor, not for itself, but for the opportunity it furnishes for dreaming, which is the great under-monotone of real life, unheard, unnoticed, because of its constancy. Living is dreaming. Only in the graves are there no dreams.
For thousands of years, human beings have been obsessed with beauty, truth, love, honor, altruism, courage, social relationships, art, and God. They all go together as subjective experiences, and it's a straw man to set God up as the delusion. If he is, then so is truth itself or beauty itself.
Especially now when views are becoming more polarized, we must work to understand each other across political, religious and national boundaries.
I hope people will think very carefully about the future.
We know that the wildest and most moving dramas are played not in the theatre but in the hearts of ordinary men and women.
Silence is the element in which great things fashion themselves together ... Speech is too often ... the act of quite stifling and suspending thought, so that there is none to conceal ... Speech is of Time, silence is of Eternity ... It is idle to think that, by means of words, any real communication can ever pass from one man to another.
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