Aspirations

“Science has taught... me to be careful how I adopt a view which jumps with my preconceptions, and to require stronger evidence for such belief than for one to which I was previously hostile. My business is to teach my aspirations to conform themselves to fact, not to try and make facts harmonise with my aspirations.”

-Thomas Henry Huxley,

Letter of reply to Charles Kingsley (September 23, 1860), who had offered him consolation after Huxley's young son had died some days earlier