Top 100 Thomas Huxley Quotes
#1. Sir Julian Huxley, one of the world's leading evolutionists, head of UNESCO, descendant of Thomas Huxley - Darwin's bulldog - said on a talk show, 'I suppose the reason we leaped at The Origin of Species was because the idea of God interfered with our sexual mores.'.
Julian Huxley
#2. "Agnostic" is a much more recent word than "atheist", coined by Thomas Huxley in 1869 to mean "without knowledge of God" and acquiring the usage of "being doubtful about the existence of God."
Jim Herrick
#3. People complain of the unequal distribution of wealth [but it is a far greater] injustice that any one man should have the power to write so many brilliant essays ... There is no one who writes like [Thomas Huxley].
Charles Darwin
#4. 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
#5. 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
#6. 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
#7. 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
#8. 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
#9. 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
#10. 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
#11. 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
#12. 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
#13. Science and literature are not two things, but two sides of one thing.
Thomas Huxley
#14. 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
#15. 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
#16. The scientific imagination always restrains itself within the limits of probability.
Thomas Huxley
#17. The world is neither wise nor just, but it makes up for all its folly and injustice by being damnably sentimental.
Thomas Huxley
#18. It is not who is right, but what is right, that is of importance.
Thomas Huxley
#19. 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
#20. Better live a crossing-sweeper than die and be made to talk twaddle by a "medium" hired at a guinea a seance.
Thomas Huxley
#21. 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
#22. 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
#23. We are prone to see what lies behind our eyes, rather than what apprears before them.
Thomas Huxley
#24. 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
#25. 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
#26. Proclaim human equality as loudly as you like, Witless will serve his brother.
Thomas Huxley
#27. 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
#28. Only one absolute certainty is possible to man, namely that at any given moment the feeling which he has exists.
Thomas Huxley
#30. Surely there is a time to submit to guidance and a time to take one's own way at all hazards.
Thomas Huxley
#31. Education is the instruction of the intellect in the laws of Nature.
Thomas Huxley
#32. 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
#33. 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
#34. 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
#35. 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
#36. 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
#37. The rules of the game are what we call the laws of nature.
Thomas Huxley
#38. 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
#39. 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
#40. 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
#41. Whatever evil voices may rage, Science, secure among the powers that are eternal, will do her work and be blessed.
Thomas Huxley
#42. 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
#43. Whatever part of the animal fabric whatever series of muscles, whatever viscera might be selected for comparison the result would be the same the lower Apes and the Gorilla would differ more than the Gorilla and the Man.
Thomas Huxley
#44. History warns us that it is the customary fate of new truths to begin as heresies and to end as superstitions.
Thomas Henry Huxley
#45. 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
#46. 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
#47. Economy does not lie in sparing money, but in spending it wisely.
Thomas Huxley
#48. Patience and tenacity are worth more than twice their weight of cleverness.
Thomas Huxley
#49. 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
#50. 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
#51. Teach a child what is wise, that is morality. Teach him what is wise and beautiful, that is religion!
Thomas Huxley
#52. Ecclesiasticism in science is only unfaithfulness to truth.
Thomas Huxley
#53. That which lies before the human race is a constant struggle to maintain and improve, in opposition to State of Nature, the State of Art of an organized polity; in which, and by which, man may develop a worthy civilization
Thomas Huxley
#54. The struggle for existence holds as much in the intellectual as in the physical world. A theory is a species of thinking, and its right to exist is coextensive with its power of resisting extinction by its rivals.
Thomas Huxley
#55. There is no sea more dangerous than the ocean of practical politics none in which there is more need of good pilotage and of a single, unfaltering purpose when the waves rise high.
Thomas Huxley
#56. Science reckons many prophets, but there is not even a promise of a Messiah.
Thomas Huxley
#57. 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
#58. If the hypothesis of evolution is true, living matter must have arisen from non-living matter; for by the hypothesis the condition of the globe was at one time such, that living matter could not have existed in it, life being entirely incompatible with the gaseous state.
Thomas Huxley
#59. There is no absurdity in theology so great that you cannot parallel it by a greater absurdity in Nature.
Thomas Huxley
#60. 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
#61. Learn what is true in order to do what is right.
Thomas Huxley
#62. There are savages without God in any proper sense of the word, but none without ghosts.
Thomas Henry Huxley
#63. Science is organized common sense where many a beautiful theory was killed by an ugly fact.
Thomas Huxley
#64. For once reality and his brains came into contact and the result was fatal.
Thomas Henry Huxley
#65. Science is simply common sense at its best, that is, rigidly accurate in observation, and merciless to fallacy in logic.
Thomas Henry Huxley
#66. What would become of the garden if the gardener treated all the weeds and slugs and birds and trespassers as he would like to be treated, if he were in their place?
Thomas Huxley
#67. The foundation of all morality is to have done, once and for all, with lying; to give up pretending to believe that for which there is no evidence, and repeating unintelligible propositions about things beyond the possibilities of knowledge.
Thomas Huxley
#68. For myself I say deliberately, it is better to have a millstone tied round the neck and be thrown into the sea than to share the enterprises of those to whom the world has turned, and will turn, because they minister to its weaknesses and cover up the awful realities which it shudders to look at.
Thomas Huxley
#69. Natural knowledge, seeking to satisfy natural wants, has found the ideas which can alone still spiritual cravings. I say that natural knowledge, in desiring to ascertain the laws of comfort, has been driven to discover those of conduct, and to lay the foundations of a new morality.
Thomas Huxley
#70. People may talk about intellectual teaching, but what we principally want is the moral teaching.
Thomas Huxley
#71. 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
#72. 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
#73. No one can help another very much in these crises of life; but love and sympathy count for something.
Thomas Huxley
#74. That mysterious independent variable of political calculation, Public Opinion.
Thomas Huxley
#75. 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
#76. Thoughtfulness for others, generosity, modesty, and self-respect are the qualities which make a real gentleman or lady.
Thomas Huxley
#77. Nothing can be more incorrect than the assumption one sometimes meets with, that physics has one method, chemistry another, and biology a third.
Thomas Huxley
#78. My business is to teach my aspirations to confirm themselves to fact, not to try and make facts harmonize with my aspirations.
Thomas Huxley
#79. Do what you can to do what you ought, and leave hoping and fearing alone.
Thomas Henry Huxley
#80. The best men of the best epochs are simply those who make the fewest blunders and commit the fewest sins.
Thomas Huxley
#81. The results of political changes are hardly ever those which their friends hope or their foes fear.
Thomas Huxley
#82. No slavery can be abolished without a double emancipation, and the master will benefit by freedom more than the freed-man.
Thomas Huxley
#83. [Scientists] have learned to respect nothing but evidence, and to believe that their highest duty lies in submitting to it however it may jar against their inclinations.
Thomas Huxley
#84. Teach a man to read and write, and you have put into his hands the great keys of the wisdom-box.
Thomas Huxley
#85. The great thing in the world is not so much to seek happiness as to earn peace and self-respect.
Thomas Huxley
#86. 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
#87. To a clear eye the smallest fact is a window through which the infinite may be seen.
Thomas Henry Huxley
#88. No one who has lived in the world as long as you & I have, can entertain the pious delusion that it is engineered upon principles of benevolence ... the cosmos remains always beautiful and profoundly interesting in every corner-and if I had as many lives as a cat I would leave no corner unexplored.
Thomas Huxley
#89. 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
#90. Men can intoxicate themselves with ideas as effectually as with alcohol or with bang and produce, be dint of serious thinking, mental conditions hardly distinguishable from monomania.
Thomas Huxley
#91. What men of science want is only a fair day's wages for more than a fair day's work.
Thomas Huxley
#92. 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
#93. A drop of water is as powerful as a thunder-bolt.
Thomas Huxley
#94. 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
#95. Deduction, which takes us from the general proposition to facts again-teaches us, if I may so say, to anticipate from the ticket what is inside the bundle.
Thomas Huxley
#96. Let us have "sweet girl graduates" by all means. They will be none the less sweet for a little wisdom; and the "golden hair" will not curl less gracefully outside the head by reason of there being brains within.
Thomas Huxley
#97. A man who speaks out honestly and fearlessly that which he knows, and that which he believes, will always enlist the good will and the respect, however much he may fail in winning the assent, of his fellow men.
Thomas Huxley
#98. Every great advance in natural knowledge has involved the absolute rejection of authority.
Thomas H. Huxley
Thomas Henry Huxley
#99. 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
#100. I'd rather have an ape for an ancestor than a bishop.
Thomas Huxley
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