Julian Huxley Quotes

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It is no longer possible to maintain that science and religion must operate in thought-tight compartments or concern separate sectors of life; they are both relevant to the whole of human existence.

Julian Huxley
Religion in some form is a universal function of man in society, the organ for dealing with the problems of destiny, the destiny of individual men and women, of societies and nations, and of the human species as a whole. Religions always have some intellectual or ideological framework, whether myth or theological doctrine; some morality or code of behaviour, whether barbaric or ethically rationalized; and some mode of ritualized or symbolic expression, in the form of ceremonial or celebration, collective devotion or thanksgiving, or religious art...

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
Amoeba has her picture in the book, Proud Protozoon! — Yet beware of pride, All she can do is fatten and divide; She cannot even read, or sew, or cook.

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
Knowledge is basic. It is knowledge which enables us to understand the world and ourselves, and to exercise some control or guidance. It sets us in a fruitful and significant relation with the enduring processes of the universe. And, by revealing the possibilities of fulfillment that are still open, it provides an overriding incentive.

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

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 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
Is it a sin to prison you? Through the runways in the grass You and yours in hundreds pass, An unimagined world of shrews, A world whose hurrying twilight news Never stirs but now and then The striding world of booted men.

Julian Huxley
Like the meridians as they approach the poles, science, philosophy and religion are bound to converge as they draw nearer to the whole. I say "converge" advisedly, but without merging, and without ceasing, to the very end, to assail the real from different angles and on different planes.

Julian Huxley
One would expect that any interference with such a complicated piece of chemical machinery as the genetic constitution would result in damage. And, in fact, this is so: the great majority of mutant genes are harmful in their effects on the organism.

Julian Huxley
And all about the cosmic sky, The black that lies beyond our blue, Dead stars innumerable lie, And stars of red and angry hue Not dead but doomed to die.

Julian Huxley
The entire cosmos is made out of one and the same world-stuff, operated by the same energy as we ourselves. "Mind" and "matter" appears as two aspects of our unitary mind-bodies. There is no separate supernatural realm: all phenomena are part of one natural process of evolution. There is no basic cleavage between science and religion; they are both organs of evolving humanity.

Julian Huxley
Science... has not only turned her face outwards from man, but stripped him of all the robes of his divinity, turned him out of the palace that he had so laboriously built in the center of the world, and left him in rags, pitiably insignificant and suddenly transported to an outlying corner of the cosmos.

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

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 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
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
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
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
Science has two main functions in civilization. One is to give man a picture of the world phenomena, the most accurate and complete picture possible. The other is to provide him with the means of controlling his environment and his destiny.

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

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
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
Sooner or later, false thinking brings wrong conduct.

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
Evolution is a process, of which we are products, and in which we are active agents. There is no finality about the process, and no automatic or unified progress; but much improvement has occurred in the past, and there could be much further improvement in the future (though there is also the possibility of future failure and regression). Thus the central long-term concern of religion must be to promote further evolutionary improvement and to realise new possibilities; and this means greater fulfilment by more human individuals and fuller achievement by more human societies.

Julian Huxley