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Today is the birthday of Thomas Henry Huxley (May 4, 1825 – June 29, 1895), biologist and educator, best known for his strong support for Darwin's theory of evolution.

“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.” - Thomas Henry Huxley

“If a little knowledge is dangerous, where is the man who has so much as to be out of danger?” - Thomas Henry Huxley

“The only medicine for suffering, crime, and all other woes of mankind, is wisdom. Teach a man to read and write, and you have put into his hands the great keys of the wisdom box. But it is quite another thing to open the box.” - Thomas Henry Huxley

“I am too much of a skeptic to deny the possibility of anything.” - Thomas Henry Huxley

“Zeal without knowledge is fire without light.” - Thomas Henry Huxley

Trivia bit: The word "agnostic" was introduced by Thomas Henry Huxley in 1860.

"When I reached intellectual maturity and began to ask myself whether I was an atheist, a theist, or a pantheist; a materialist or an idealist; Christian or a freethinker; I found that the more I learned and reflected, the less ready was the answer; until, at last, I came to the conclusion that I had neither art nor part with any of these denominations, except the last. The one thing in which most of these good people were agreed was the one thing in which I differed from them. They were quite sure they had attained a certain "gnosis,"–had, more or less successfully, solved the problem of existence; while I was quite sure I had not, and had a pretty strong conviction that the problem was insoluble.

So I took thought, and invented what I conceived to be the appropriate title of "agnostic." It came into my head as suggestively antithetic to the "gnostic" of Church history, who professed to know so much about the very things of which I was ignorant. To my great satisfaction the term took." - Thomas Henry Huxley

Huxley image source(1)