Sooner or later, false thinking brings wrong conduct.
Interpretation
False beliefs and misconceptions inevitably lead to harmful actions.
Julian Huxley's quote highlights the detrimental effects of misguided thinking on behavior. It emphasizes that when individuals hold onto false beliefs, their actions will likely be misaligned with reality, ultimately resulting in negative consequences. The quote serves as a reminder of the importance of critical thinking and striving for truth, as our thoughts influence our actions and the world around us.
In practice
In a speech about critical thinking, one could illustrate the dangers of false thinking using this quote.
...any belief in supernatural creators, rulers, or influencers of natural or human process introduces an irreparable split into the universe, and prevents us from grasping its real unity. Any belief in Absolutes, whether the absolute validity of moral commandments, of authority of revelation, of inner certitudes, or of divine inspiration, erects a formidable barrier against progress and the responsibility of improvement, moral, rational, and religious.
To speculate without facts is to attempt to enter a house of which one has not the key, by wandering aimlessly round and round, searching the walls and now and then peeping through the windows. Facts are the key.
Today the god hypothesis has ceased to be scientifically tenable, has lost its explanatory value and is becoming an intellectual and moral burden to our thought. It no longer convinces or comforts, and its abandonment often brings a deep sense of relief.
Will our Philosophy to later Life_x000D_ _x000D_ Seem but a crudeness of the planet's youth,_x000D_ _x000D_ Our Wisdom but a parasite of Truth?
The scientific doctrine of progress is destined to replace not only the myth of progress, but all other myths of human earthly destiny. It will inevitably become one of the cornerstones of man's theology, or whatever may be the future substitute for theology, and the most important external support for human ethics.
Men who are addicted to the passions are like the torch-carrier running against the wind; his hands are sure to be burned.
While we are making up our minds as to when we shall begin, the opportunity is lost.
All the lessons of history in four sentences: Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad with power. The mills of God grind slowly, but they grind exceedingly small. The bee fertilizes the flower it robs. When it is dark enough, you can see the stars.
Chess is not for the faint-hearted; it absorbs a person entirely. To get to the bottom of this game, he has to give himself up into slavery. Chess is difficult, it demands work, serious reflection and zealous research.
But Chinese civilization has the overpowering beauty of the wholly other, and only the wholly other can inspire the deepest love and the profoundest desire to learn.
There is nothing, Sir, too little for so little a creature as man. It is by studying little things that we attain the great art of having as little misery and as much happiness as possible.
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