Top 41 Thomas Henry Huxley Quotes
#1. Can any one deny that the old Israelites conceived Jahveh not only in the image of a man, but in that of a changeable, irritable, and, occasionally, violent man?
Thomas Henry Huxley
#2. 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 Henry Huxley
#4. The most considerable difference I note among men is not in their readiness to fall into error, but in their readiness to acknowledge these inevitable lapses.
Thomas Henry Huxley
#5. Sit down before fact like a little child, and be prepared to give up every preconceived notion, follow humbly wherever and to whatever abyss Nature leads or you shall learn nothing.
Thomas Henry Huxley
#6. History warns us that it is the customary fate of new truths to begin as heresies and to end as superstitions.
Thomas Henry Huxley
#7. The question of the position of man, as an animal, has given rise to much disputation, with the result of proving that there is no anatomical or developmental character by which he is more widely distinguished from the group of animals most nearly allied to him, than they are from one another.
Thomas Henry Huxley
#8. If I may paraphrase Hobbes's well-known aphorism, I would say that 'books are the money of Literature, but only the counters of Science.
Thomas Henry Huxley
#9. There are savages without God in any proper sense of the word, but none without ghosts.
Thomas Henry Huxley
#10. For once reality and his brains came into contact and the result was fatal.
Thomas Henry Huxley
#11. Science is simply common sense at its best, that is, rigidly accurate in observation, and merciless to fallacy in logic.
Thomas Henry Huxley
#12. The occurrence of successive forms of life upon our globe is an historical fact, which cannot be disputed; and the relation of these successive forms, as stages of evolution of the same type, is established in various cases.
Thomas Henry Huxley
#13. Do what you can to do what you ought, and leave hoping and fearing alone.
Thomas Henry Huxley
#14. Science is nothing but trained and organized common sense, differing from the latter only as a veteran may differ from a raw recruit: and its methods differ from those of common sense only as far as the guardsman's cut and thrust differ from the manner in which a savage wields his club.
Thomas Henry Huxley
#15. To a clear eye the smallest fact is a window through which the infinite may be seen.
Thomas Henry Huxley
#16. Of moral purpose I see no trace in Nature. That is an article of exclusively human manufacture and very much to our credit.
Thomas Henry Huxley
#17. Sit down before fact as a little child, be prepared to give up every preconceived notion, follow humbly wherever and to whatever abysses nature leads, or you shall learn nothing. I have only begun to learn content and peace of mind since I have resolved at all risks to do this.
Thomas Henry Huxley
#18. Every great advance in natural knowledge has involved the absolute rejection of authority.
Thomas H. Huxley
Thomas Henry Huxley
#19. It is not what we believe, but why we believe it. Moral responsibility lies in diligently weighing the evidence. We must actively doubt; we have to scrutinize our views, not take them on trust. No virtue attached to blindly accepting orthodoxy, however 'venerable' ...
Thomas Henry Huxley
#21. If individuality has no play, society does not advance; if individuality breaks out of all bonds, society perishes.
Thomas Henry Huxley
#22. The rung of a ladder was never meant to rest upon, but only to hold a man's foot long enough to enable him to put the other somewhat higher.
Thomas Henry Huxley
#23. There is the greatest practical benefit in making a few failures early in life.
Thomas Henry Huxley
#24. The facts of variability, of the struggle for existence, of adaptation to conditions, were notorious enough; but none of us had suspected that the road to the heart of the species problem lay through them, until Darwin and Wallace dispelled the darkness.
Thomas Henry Huxley
#25. Trust a witness in all matters in which neither his self-interest, his passions, his prejudices, nor the love of the marvellous is strongly concerned. When they are involved, require corroborative evidence in exact proportion to the contravention of probability by the thing testified.
Thomas Henry Huxley
#26. How it is that anything so remarkable as a state of consciousness comes about as a result of irritating nervous tissue, is just as unaccountable as the appearance of the djinn when Aladdin rubbed his lamp in the story.
Thomas Henry Huxley
#27. What we call rational grounds for our beliefs are often extremely irrational attempts to justify our instincts.
Thomas Henry Huxley
#29. If a little knowledge is dangerous, where is the man who has so much as to be out of danger?
Thomas Henry Huxley
#30. Those who are ignorant of Geology, find no difficulty in believing that the world was made as it is; and the shepherd, untutored in history, sees no reason to regard the green mounds which indicate the site of a Roman camp, as aught but part and parcel of the primeval hill-side.
Thomas Henry Huxley
#31. We live in a world which is full of misery and ignorance, and the plain duty of each and all of us is to try to make the little corner he can influence somewhat less miserable and somewhat less ignorant than it was before he entered.
Thomas Henry Huxley
#32. It is far better for a man to go wrong in freedom than to go right in chains.
Thomas Henry Huxley
#33. The man of science has learned to believe in justification, not by faith, but by verification.
Thomas Henry Huxley
#34. I can assure you that there is the greatest practical benefit in making a few failures early in life. You learn that which is of inestimable importance - that there are a great many people in the world who are just as clever as you are.
Thomas Henry Huxley
#35. In fact a favourite problem of Tyndall is - Given the molecular forces in a mutton chop, deduce Hamlet or Faust therefrom. He is confident that the Physics of the Future will solve this easily.
Thomas Henry Huxley
#36. There are some people who see a great deal and some who see very little in the same things.
Thomas Henry Huxley
#37. The great tragedy of Science - the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact.
Thomas Henry Huxley
#38. Let us understand, once for all, that the ethical progress of society depends, not on imitating the cosmic process, still less in running away from it, but in combating it.
Thomas Henry Huxley
#40. The scientific spirit is of more value than its products, and irrationally held truths may be more harmful than reasoned errors.
Thomas Henry Huxley
#41. The only medicine for suffering, crime, and all the other woes of mankind, is wisdom.
Thomas Henry Huxley
Famous Authors
Popular Topics
Scroll to Top
