Thomas H Huxley Quotes

#1. Every great advance in natural knowledge has involved the absolute rejection of authority.
Thomas H. Huxley

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

#3. Better live a crossing-sweeper than die and be made to talk twaddle by a "medium" hired at a guinea a seance.

Thomas Huxley

#4. If the perpetual oscillation of nations between anarchy and despotism is to be replaced by the steady march of self-restraining freedom, it will be because men will gradually bring themselves to deal with political, as they now deal with scientific questions.

Thomas Huxley

#5. 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

#6. We are prone to see what lies behind our eyes, rather than what apprears before them.

Thomas Huxley

#7. 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

#8. 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

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

Thomas Huxley

#10. 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

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

Thomas Huxley

#12. Science commits suicide when it adopts a creed.

Thomas Henry Huxley

#13. Surely there is a time to submit to guidance and a time to take one's own way at all hazards.

Thomas Huxley

#14. Education is the instruction of the intellect in the laws of Nature.

Thomas Huxley

#15. 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

#16. 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

#17. 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

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

Thomas Huxley

#19. The world is neither wise nor just, but it makes up for all its folly and injustice by being damnably sentimental.

Thomas Huxley

#20. The scientific imagination always restrains itself within the limits of probability.

Thomas Huxley

#21. Rome is the one great spiritual organisation which is able to resist and must, as a matter of life and death, the progress of science and modern civilization

Thomas Huxley

#22. 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

#23. Science and literature are not two things, but two sides of one thing.

Thomas Huxley

#24. 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

#25. I take it that the good of mankind means the attainment, by every man, of all the happiness which he can enjoy without diminishing the happiness of his fellow men.

Thomas Huxley

#26. 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

#27. 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

#28. 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

#29. I am content with nothing, restless and ambitious ... and I despise myself for the vanity, which formed half the stimulus to my exertions. Oh would that I were one of those plodding wise fools who having once set their hand to the plough go on nothing doubting.

Thomas Huxley

#30. 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

#31. Oh devil! truth is better than much profit. I have searched over the grounds of my belief, and if wife and child and name and fame were all to be lost to me one after the other as the penalty, still I will not lie.

Thomas Huxley

#32. 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