Julian Huxley Quotes

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Facts are too bulky to be lugged about conveniently except on the wheels of theory.

Julian Huxley
"Know me, know my frog" — that is, I think, a legitimate adaptation of the old proverb for the biologist.

Julian Huxley
The time has gone by when the intelligent public needs to be reminded of the practical utility of science, or of the fact that the investigation of any problem, however apparently remote from everyday life, may be fraught with the most valuable consequences.

Julian Huxley
The supernatural is being swept out of the universe in the flood of new knowledge of what is natural. It will soon be as impossible for an intelligent, educated man or woman to believe in a god as it is now to believe the earth is flat, that flies can be spontaneously generated... or that death is always due to witchcraft... The god hypothesis is no longer of any pragmatic value for the interpretation or comprehension of nature, and indeed often stands in the way of better and truer interpretation. Operationally, God is beginning to resemble not a ruler but the last fading smile of a cosmic Cheshire cat.

Julian Huxley
The brain alone is not responsible for mind, even though it is a necessary organ for its manifestation. Indeed an isolated brain is a piece of biological nonsense.

Julian Huxley
Christianity is a universalist and monotheist religion of salvation. Its long consolidation and explosive spread, achieved through a long period of discussion and zealous ferment, released vast human forces which have largely shaped the western world as we know it. An evolutionary and humanist religion of fulfilment could be more truly universal and could release even vaster human forces, which could in large measure shape the development of the entire world...

Julian Huxley
To speculate without facts is to attempt to enter a house of which one has not the key, by wandering aimlessly round and round, searching the walls and now and then peeping through the windows. Facts are the key.

Julian Huxley
Man emerged as the dominant type on earth about a million years ago, but has only been really effective as a psychosocial organism for under ten thousand years. In that mere second of cosmic time, he has produced astonishing achievements — but has also been guilty of unprecedented horrors and follies. And looked at in the long perspective of evolution he is singularly imperfect, still incapable of carrying out his planetary responsibilities in a satisfactory manner...

Julian Huxley
To discover the real nature of things, we must discard all prejudices, all purely instinctive ways of thinking, and labour along the stony but sure path of reason and verification.

Julian Huxley
Imagination is needed in science as much as in any other mental activity. But it must not take charge of the scientific mind. If it [were to] do, disaster may follow.

Julian Huxley
By speech first, but far more by writing, man has been able to put something of himself beyond death. In tradition and in books an integral part of the individual persists, for it can influence the minds and actions of other people in different places and at different times: a row of black marks on a page can move a man to tears, though the bones of him that wrote it are long ago crumbled to dust.

Julian Huxley
As a result of a thousand million years of evolution, the universe is becoming conscious of itself, able to understand something of its past history and its possible future. This cosmic self-awareness is being realized in one tiny fragment of the universe — in a few of us human beings. Perhaps it has been realized elsewhere too, through the evolution of conscious living creatures on the planets of other stars. But on this our planet, it has never happened before.

Julian Huxley
The Kink in empty space that provides resistance, Precious inertia — mine the sole foundation On which swift Energy's flow of fluid emanation Fraternally builds reality into existence.

Julian Huxley
The attempt to understand this universe, including the nature of man, is the task of science; and as she makes progress with this task, so will she become more and more an indispensable part of philosophy and religion — imagination's touchstone, thought's background, action's base.

Julian Huxley
Words are tools which automatically carve concepts out of experience.

Julian Huxley
What we now need is a multitude of participants to take part in the great discussion and to join in the search for the larger truth and the more fruitful patterns of belief which we confidently believe is waiting to be elicited.

Julian Huxley
Without the impersonal guidance and the efficient control provided by science civilization will either stagnate or collapse, and human nature cannot make progress towards realizing its possible evolutionary destiny.

Julian Huxley
Science, like Empires, have their rise and their time of flourishing, though not their decay.

Julian Huxley
Energy. I am energy. Sublime and meaningless Energy. I stream in floods across the empty ocean Of space, where island-universes float, Each like a little lonely boat.

Julian Huxley
The last two thousand years have seen the development of elaborate monotheistic theologies; but in the process their single God has broken into many, or at least has assumed a number of distinct and indeed sometimes actively hostile forms; and their nominal universalism has degenerated into competition for the possession of absolute truth.

Julian Huxley
Yet still the silver corpse must spin And with another's light must glow. Her frozen mountains must forget Their primal hot volcanic breath, Doomed to revolve for ages yet, Void amphitheatres of death.

Julian Huxley
The scientific doctrine of progress is destined to replace not only the myth of progress, but all other myths of human earthly destiny. It will inevitably become one of the cornerstones of man's theology, or whatever may be the future substitute for theology, and the most important external support for human ethics.

Julian Huxley
Modem civilisation rests upon physical science; take away her gifts to our own country, and our position among the leading nations of the world is gone to-morrow; for it is physical science only that makes intelligence and moral energy stronger than brute force.

Julian Huxley
Birds in general are stupid, in the sense of being little able to meet unforeseen emergencies; but their lives are often emotional, and their emotions are richly and finely expressed.

Julian Huxley
We shall start from new premises. … The human species can, if it wishes, transcend itself — not just sporadically, an individual here in one way, an individual there in another way, but in its entirety, as humanity. We need a name for this new belief. Perhaps transhumanism will serve: man remaining man, but transcending himself, by realizing new possibilities of and for his human nature.
"I believe in transhumanism": once there are enough people who can truly say that, the human species will be on the threshold of a new kind of existence, as different from ours as ours is from that of Pekin man. It will at last be consciously fulfilling its real destiny.

Julian Huxley