Cognitive pollution about cognitive pollution

Cognitive pollution as an historical issue.

I came across this seeming too perfect quotation from Reflections; or, Sentences and Moral Maxims (1678) by François Duc de La Rochefoucauld.

There is nothing more horrible than the murder of a beautiful theory by a brutal gang of facts.

I went searching and have yet to find it. Given that the original is a translation from French it is possible that there is an issue of paraphrasing. None-the-less, it seems doubtful that this is something attributable to Rochefoucauld.

I think this is probably the actual quotation. From Thomas Henry Huxley, Presidential Address at the British Association (1870); "Biogenesis and Abiogenesis", Collected Essays, Volume 8, p. 229

The great tragedy of Science — the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact.