Thomas Huxley Quotes

#1. You may read any quantity of books, and you may almost as ignorant as you were at starting, if you don't have, at the back of yourminds, the change for words in definite images which can only be acquired through the operation of your observing faculties on the phenomena of nature.

Thomas Huxley

#2. Of all the senseless babble I have ever had occasion to read, the demonstrations of these philosophers who undertake to tell us all about the nature of God would be the worst, if they were not surpassed by the still greater absurdities of the philosophers who try to prove that there is no God.

Thomas Huxley

#3. Within the last fifty years, the extraordinary growth of every department of physical science has spread among us mental food of so nutritious and stimulating a character that a new ecdysis seems imminent.

Thomas Huxley

#4. It is because the body is a machine that education is possible. Education is the formation of habits, a superinducing of an artificial organization upon the natural organization of the body.

Thomas Huxley

#5. The clergy are at present divided into three sections: an immense body who are ignorant; a small proportion who know and are silent; and a minute minority who know and speak according to their knowledge.

Thomas Huxley

#6. Some experience of popular lecturing had convinced me that the necessity of making things plain to uninstructed people, was one of the very best means of clearing up the obscure corners in one's own mind.

Thomas Huxley

#7. It seems safe to look forward to the time when the conception of attractive and repulsive forces, having served its purpose as a useful piece of scientific scaffolding, will be replaced by the deduction of the phenomena known as attraction and repulsion, from the general laws of motion.

Thomas Huxley

#8. It is not who is right, but what is right, that is of importance.

Thomas Huxley

#9. In science, as in art, and, as I believe, in every other sphere of human activity, there may be wisdom in a multitude of counsellors, but it is only in one or two of them.

Thomas Huxley

#10. True science and true religion are twin sisters, and the separation of either from the other is sure to prove the death of both. Science prospers exactly in proportion as it is religious; and religion flourishes in exact proportion to the scientific depth and firmness of its basis.

Thomas Huxley

#11. To quarrel with the uncertainty that besets us in intellectual affairs would be about as reasonable as to object to live one's life with due thought for the morrow because no man can be sure he will alive an hour hence.

Thomas Huxley

#12. Proclaim human equality as loudly as you like, Witless will serve his brother.

Thomas Huxley

#13. Only one absolute certainty is possible to man, namely that at any given moment the feeling which he has exists.

Thomas Huxley

#14. If there is anything in the world which I do firmly believe in, it is the universal validity of the law of causation.

Thomas Huxley

#15. To persons uninstructed in natural history, their country or seaside stroll is a walk through a gallery filled with wonderful works of art, nine-tenths of which have their faces turned to the wall.

Thomas Huxley

#16. There is assuredly no more effectual method of clearing up one's own mind on any subject than by talking it over, so to speak, with men of real power and grasp, who have considered it from a totally different point of view.

Thomas Huxley

#17. That which endures is not one or another association of living forms, but the process of which the cosmos is the product, and of which these are among the transitory expressions.

Thomas Huxley

#18. In truth, the laboratory is the forecourt of the temple of philosophy, and whoso has not offered sacrifices and undergone purification there has little chance of admission into the sanctuary.

Thomas Huxley

#19. The rules of the game are what we call the laws of nature.

Thomas Huxley

#20. There is nothing of permanent value (putting aside a few human affections) nothing that satisfies quiet reflection
except the sense of having worked according to one's capacity and light to make things clear and get rid of cant and shams of all sorts.

Thomas Huxley

#21. No delusion is greater than the notion that method and industry can make up for lack of mother-wit, either in science or in practical life.

Thomas Huxley

#22. Whatever evil voices may rage, Science, secure among the powers that are eternal, will do her work and be blessed.

Thomas Huxley

#23. Life is like walking along a crowded street
there always seem to be fewer obstacles to getting along on the opposite pavement
and yet, if one crosses over, matters are rarely mended.

Thomas Huxley

#24. Patience and tenacity are worth more than twice their weight of cleverness.

Thomas Huxley

#25. I believe that history might be, and ought to be, taught in a new fashion so as to make the meaning of it as a process of evolution intelligible to the young.

Thomas Huxley

#26. The man who is all morality and intellect, although he may be good and even great, is, after all, only half a man.

Thomas Huxley

#27. Teach a child what is wise, that is morality. Teach him what is wise and beautiful, that is religion!

Thomas Huxley

#28. Science reckons many prophets, but there is not even a promise of a Messiah.

Thomas Huxley

#29. Agnosticism is not properly described as a "negative" creed, nor indeed as a creed of any kind, except in so far as it expresses absolute faith in the validity of a principle which is as much ethical as intellectual.

Thomas Huxley

#30. Learn what is true in order to do what is right.

Thomas Huxley

#31. Science is organized common sense where many a beautiful theory was killed by an ugly fact.

Thomas Huxley

#32. No mistake is so commonly made by clever people as that of assuming a cause to be bad because the arguments of its supporters are, to a great extent, nonsensical

Thomas Huxley

#33. No one can help another very much in these crises of life; but love and sympathy count for something.

Thomas Huxley

#34. That mysterious independent variable of political calculation, Public Opinion.

Thomas Huxley

#35. I fail to find a trace [in Protestantism] of any desire to set reason free. The most that can be discovered is a proposal to change masters. From being a slave of the papacy, the intellect was to become the serf of the Bible.

Thomas Huxley

#36. Thoughtfulness for others, generosity, modesty, and self-respect are the qualities which make a real gentleman or lady.

Thomas Huxley

#37. My business is to teach my aspirations to confirm themselves to fact, not to try and make facts harmonize with my aspirations.

Thomas Huxley

#38. The results of political changes are hardly ever those which their friends hope or their foes fear.

Thomas Huxley

#39. No slavery can be abolished without a double emancipation, and the master will benefit by freedom more than the freed-man.

Thomas Huxley

#40. What men of science want is only a fair day's wages for more than a fair day's work.

Thomas Huxley

#41. Unfortunately, it is much easier to shut one's eyes to good than to evil. Pain and sorrow knock at our doors more loudly than pleasure and happiness; and the prints of their heavy footsteps are less easily effaced.

Thomas Huxley

#42. A drop of water is as powerful as a thunder-bolt.

Thomas Huxley

#43. Agnosticism simply means that a man shall not say that he knows or believes that for which he has no grounds for professing to believe.

Thomas Huxley

#44. I'd rather have an ape for an ancestor than a bishop.

Thomas Huxley

#45. There is no alleviation for the sufferings of mankind except veracity of thought and of action, and the resolute facing of the world as it is when the garment of make-believe by which pious hands have hidden its uglier features is stripped off.

Thomas Huxley

#46. Science has fulfilled her function when she has ascertained and enunciated truth.

Thomas Huxley

#47. The Bible account of the creation of Eve is a preposterous fable.

Thomas Huxley

#48. Friendship involves many things but, above all the power of going outside oneself and appreciating what is noble and loving in another.

Thomas Huxley

#49. I care not what subject is taught, if only it be taught well.

Thomas Huxley

#50. The only freedom I care about is the freedom to do right; the freedom to do wrong I am ready to part with on the cheapest terms to anyone who will take it of me.

Thomas Huxley

#51. It sounds paradoxical to say the attainment of scientific truth has been effected, to a great extent, by the help of scientific errors.

Thomas Huxley

#52. The birth of science was the death of superstition.

Thomas Huxley

#53. Every living creature commences its existence under a form different from, and simpler than, that which it eventually attains.

Thomas Huxley

#54. I took thought, and invented what I conceived to be the appropriate title of 'agnostic'.

Thomas Huxley

#55. Material advancement has its share in moral and intellectual progress. Becky Sharp's acute remark that it is not difficult to be virtuous on ten thousand a year has its applications to nations; and it is futile to expect a hungry and squalid population to be anything but violent and gross.

Thomas Huxley

#56. I am too much of a sceptic to deny the possibility of anything especially as I am now so much occupied with theology but I don't see my way to your conclusion.

Thomas Huxley

#57. The population question is the real riddle of the sphinx, to which no political Oedipus has as yet found the answer. In view of the ravages of the terrible monster over-multiplication, all other riddle sink into insignificance.

Thomas Huxley

#58. Mix salt and sand, and it shall puzzle the wisest of men, with his mere natural appliances, to separate all the grains of sand from all the grains of salt; but a shower of rain will effect the same object in ten minutes.

Thomas Huxley

#59. The dogma of the infallibility of the Bible is no more self-evident than is that of the infallibility of the popes.

Thomas Huxley

#60. What are the moral convictions most fondly held by barbarous and semi-barbarous people? They are the convictions that authority is the soundest basis of belief; that merit attaches to readiness to believe; that the doubting disposition is a bad one, and skepticism is a sin.

Thomas Huxley

#61. There is but one right, and the possibilities of wrong are infinite.

Thomas Huxley

#62. Cherish [Science], venerate her, follow her methods faithfully ... and the future of this people will be greater than the past.

Thomas Huxley

#63. The improver of natural knowledge absolutely refuses to acknowledge authority, as such. For him, skepticism is the highest of duties; blind faith the one unpardonable sin.

Thomas Huxley

#64. The more rapidly truth is spread among mankind the better it will be for them. Only let us be sure that it is the truth.

Thomas Huxley

#65. All knowledge is good. It is impossible to say any fragment of knowledge, however insignificant or remote from one's ordinary pursuits, may not some day be turned to account.

Thomas Huxley

#66. Time, whose tooth gnaws away everything else, is powerless against truth.

Thomas Huxley

#67. It ought not to be unpleasant to say that which one honestly believes or disbelieves. That it so constantly is painful to do so, is quite enough obstacle to the progress of mankind in that most valuable of all qualities, honesty of word or of deed.

Thomas Huxley

#68. Mathematics may be compared to a mill of exquisite workmanship, which grinds your stuff to any degree of fineness.

Thomas Huxley

#69. There is far too much of the feeding-bottle in education and young people ought to be supplied with good intellectual food and then left to help themselves.

Thomas Huxley

#70. The only people, scientific or other, who never make mistakes are those who do nothing.

Thomas Huxley

#71. I doubt the fact, to begin with, but if it be so even, what is this but in grand words asking me to believe a thing because I like it.

Thomas Huxley

#72. The child who has been taught to make an accurate elevation, plan, and section of a pint pot has had an admirable training in accuracy of eye and hand.

Thomas Huxley

#73. Though under-instruction is a bad thing, it is not impossible that over-instruction may be worse.

Thomas Huxley

#74. Size is not grandeur, and territory does not make a nation.

Thomas Huxley

#75. A man has no reason to be ashamed of having an ape for his grandfather. If there were an ancestor whom I should feel shame in recalling it would rather be a man who plunges into scientific questions with which he has no real acquaintance, only to obscure them by an aimless rhetoric ...

Thomas Huxley

#76. In matters of the intellect, do not pretend that conclusions are certain which are not demonstrated or demonstrable. That I take to be the agnostic faith, which if a man keep whole and undefiled, he shall not be ashamed to look the universe in the face, whatever the future may have in store for him.

Thomas Huxley

#77. Even in the important matter of cranial capacity, Men differ more widely from one another than they do from the Apes; while the lowest Apes differ as much, in proportion, from the highest, as the latter does from Man.

Thomas Huxley

#78. Protoplasm, simple or nucleated, is the formal basis of all life. It is the clay of the potter: which, bake it and paint it as hewill, remains clay, separated by artifice, and not by nature from the commonest brick or sun-dried clod.

Thomas Huxley

#79. The doctrine of transmigration... was a means of constructing a plausible vindication of the ways of the cosmos to man; ... none but very hasty thinkers will reject it on the grounds of inherent absurdity.

Thomas Huxley

#80. People never will recollect that mere learning and mere cleverness are of next to no value in life, while energy and intellectual grip, the things that are inborn and cannot be taught, are everything.

Thomas Huxley

#81. I would rather be the offspring of two apes than be a man and afraid to face the truth.

Thomas Huxley

#82. The ultimate court of appeal is observation and experiment ... not authority.

Thomas Huxley

#83. Not only does every animal live at the expense of some other animal or plant, but the very plants are at war ... The individuals of a species are like the crew of a foundered ship, and none but good swimmers have a chance of reaching the land.

Thomas Huxley

#84. If a man cannot see a church, it is preposterous to take his opinion about its altar-piece or painted window.

Thomas Huxley

#85. If every man possessed everything he wanted, and no one had the power to interfere with such possession; or if no man desired thatwhich could damage his fellow-man, justice would have no part to play in the universe.

Thomas Huxley

#86. What men need is as much knowledge as they can organize for action; give them more and it may become injurious. Some men are heavy and stupid from undigested learning.

Thomas Huxley

#87. I cannot but think that he who finds a certain proportion of pain and evil inseparably woven up in the life of the very worms, will bear his own share with more courage and submission.

Thomas Huxley

#88. Living things have no inertia, and tend to no equilibrium.

Thomas Huxley

#89. The doctrine that all men are, in any sense, or have been, at any time, free and equal, is an utterly baseless fiction.

Thomas Huxley

#90. Every philosophical thinker hails it [The Origin of Species] as a veritable Whitworth gun in the armoury of liberalism.

Thomas Huxley

#91. The thief and the murderer follow nature just as much as the philanthropist.

Thomas Huxley

#92. Not far from the invention of fire must rank the invention of doubt.

Thomas Huxley

#93. It is the first duty of a hypothesis to be intelligible.

Thomas Huxley

#94. A world of facts lies outside and beyond the world of words.

Thomas Huxley

#95. Of the few innocent pleasures left to men past middle life, the jamming of common sense down the throats of fools is perhaps the keenest.

Thomas Huxley

#96. Make up your mind to act decidedly and take the consequences. No good is ever done in this world by hesitation.

Thomas Huxley

#97. My experience of the world is that things left to themselves don't get right.

Thomas Huxley

#98. I protest that if some great Power would agree to make me always think what is true and do what is right, on condition of being turned into a sort of clock and would up every morning before I got out of bed, I should instantly close with the offer.

Thomas Huxley

#99. 'Infidel' is a term of reproach, which Christians and Mohammedans, in their modesty, agree to apply to those who differ from them.

Thomas Huxley

#100. Freedom and order are not incompatible ... truth is strength ... free discussion is the very life of truth.

Thomas Huxley