Thomas H Huxley Quotes & Sayings

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

No rational man, cognizant of the facts, believes that the average Negro is the equal, still less the superior, of the white man ... it is simply incredible to think that ... he will be able to compete successfully with his bigger-brained and smaller-jawed rival, in a contest which is to be carried on by thoughts and not by bites. — Thomas Huxley

Surely there is a time to submit to guidance and a time to take one's own way at all hazards. — Thomas Huxley

Medals are great encouragement to young men and lead them to feel their work is of value, I remember how keenly I felt this when in the 1890s. I received the Darwin Medal and the Huxley Medal. When one is old, one wants no encouragement and one goes on with one's work to the extent of one's power, because it has become habitual. — Karl Pearson

History warns us that it is the customary fate of new truths to begin as heresies and to end as superstitions. — Thomas Henry Huxley

Action is the catalyst that creates accomplishments. It is the path that takes us from uncrafted hopes to realized dreams. — Thomas Huxley

Regarded anatomically, the resemblances between the foot of Man and the foot of the Gorilla are far more striking and important than the differences ... be the differences between the hand and foot of Man and those of the Gorilla what they may the differences between those of the Gorilla and those of the lower Apes are much greater. — Thomas Huxley

There is no absurdity in theology so great that you cannot parallel it by a greater absurdity in Nature. — Thomas Huxley

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

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

[Thomas Henry] Huxley, I believe, was the greatest Englishman of the Nineteenth Century - perhaps the greatest Englishman of all time. When one thinks of him, one thinks inevitably of such men as Goethe and Aristotle. For in him there was that rich, incomparable blend of intelligence and character, of colossal knowledge and high adventurousness, of instinctive honesty and indomitable courage which appears in mankind only once in a blue moon. There have been far greater scientists, even in England, but there has never been a scientist who was a greater man. — H.L. Mencken

If individuality has no play, society does not advance; if individuality breaks out of all bonds, society perishes. — Thomas Henry Huxley

Mr. Darwin's hypothesis is not, so far as I am aware, inconsistent with any known biological fact; on the contrary, if admitted, the facts of Development, of Comparative Anatomy, of Geographical Distribution, and of Palaeontology, become connected together, and exhibit a meaning such as they never possessed before; and I, for one, am fully convinced that if not precisely true, that hypothesis is as near an approximation to the truth as, for example, the Copernican hypothesis was to the true theory of the planetary motions. — Thomas Huxley

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

The scientific spirit is of more value than its products, and irrationally held truths may be more harmful than reasoned errors. — Thomas Henry Huxley

[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

And when you cannot prove that people are wrong, but only that they are absurd, the best course is to let them alone. — Thomas Huxley

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

To a clear eye the smallest fact is a window through which the infinite may be seen. — Thomas Henry Huxley

As if to demonstrate, by a striking example, the impossibility of erecting any cerebral barrier between man and the apes, Nature has provided us, in the latter animals, with an almost complete series of gradations from brains little higher than that of a Rodent, to brains little lower than that of Man. — Thomas Huxley

I took thought, and invented what I conceived to be the appropriate title of 'agnostic'. — Thomas Huxley

Social progress means a checking of the cosmic process at every step and the substitution for it of another, which may be called the ethical process; the end of which is not the survival of those who may happen to be the fittest, in respect of the whole of the conditions which obtain, but of those who are ethically the best. — Thomas Huxley

Without seeing any reason to believe that women are, on the average, so strong physically, intellectually, or morally, as men, I cannot shut my eyes to the fact that many women are much better endowed in all these respects than many men, and I am at a loss to understand on what grounds of justice or public policy a career which is open to the weakest and most foolish of the male sex should be forcibly closed to women of vigor and capacity. — Thomas Huxley

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

I have always been, am, and propose to remain a mere scholar. All that I have ever proposed to myself is to say, this and this I have learned; thus and thus have I learned it; go thou and learn better; but do not thrust on my shoulders the responsibility for your own laziness if you elect to take, on my authority, conclusions the value of which you ought to have tested for yourself. — Thomas Huxley

The Bible has been the Magna Carta of the poor and of the oppressed. — Thomas Huxley

By profession a biologist, [Thomas Henry Huxley] covered in fact the whole field of the exact sciences, and then bulged through its four fences. Absolutely nothing was uninteresting to him. His curiosity ranged from music to theology and from philosophy to history. He didn't simply know something about everything; he knew a great deal about everything. — H.L. Mencken

Missionaries, whether of philosophy or religion, rarely make rapid way, unless their preachings fall in with the prepossessions ofthe multitude of shallow thinkers, or can be made to serve as a stalking-horse for the promotion of the practical aims of the still larger multitude, who do not profess to think much, but are quite certain they want a great deal. — Thomas Huxley

As to sagacity, I should say that his judgement respecting the warmest place and the softest cushion in a room is infallible, his punctuality at meal times is admirable, and his pertinacity in jumping on people's shoulders till they give him some of the best of what is going, indicates great firmness. — Thomas Huxley

For once reality and his brains came into contact and the result was fatal. — Thomas Henry Huxley

[Thomas Henry] Huxley is a very genial, comfortable being-yet with none of the noisy and windy geniality of some folks here, whom you find with their backs turned when you are responding to the remarks that they have made you. — Henry James

What men of science want is only a fair day's wages for more than a fair day's work. — Thomas Huxley

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

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

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

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

The vast results obtained by Science are won by no mystical faculties, by no mental processes other than those which are practicedby every one of us, in the humblest and meanest affairs of life. A detective policeman discovers a burglar from the marks made by his shoe, by a mental process identical with that by which Cuvier restored the extinct animals of Montmartre from fragments of their bones. — Thomas Huxley

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