Thomas Henry Huxley Quotes

344 Sourced Quotes

There can be little doubt that the further science advances, the more extensively and consistently will all the phenomena of Nature be represented by materialistic formulae and symbols.

Thomas Henry 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 Henry Huxley
Until human life is longer and the duties of the present press less heavily, I do not think that wise men will occupy themselves with Jovian, or Martian, natural history...

Thomas Henry Huxley
Ignorance is visited as sharply as willful disobedience — incapacity meets with the same punishment as crime. Nature's discipline is not even a word and a blow, and the blow first; but the blow without the word. It is left to you to find out why your ears are boxed.

Thomas Henry Huxley
As a natural process, of the same character as the development of a tree from its seed, or of a fowl from its egg, evolution excludes creation and all other kinds of supernatural intervention.

Thomas Henry Huxley
The population question is the real riddle of the sphinx, to which no political Oedipus has as yet found the answer. In view of the ravages of the terrible monster over-multiplication, all other riddle sink into insignificance.

Thomas Henry Huxley
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
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 Henry Huxley
I would rather be the offspring of two apes than be a man and afraid to face the truth.

Thomas Henry Huxley
There is not one person in a hundred who can describe the commonest occurrence with even an approach to accuracy.

Thomas Henry Huxley
The genius which sighs for new worlds to conquer beyond that surprising region in which "geometry, algebra, and the theory of numbers melt into one another like sunset tints, or the colours of a dying dolphin," may be of comparatively little service in the cold domain (mostly lighted by the moon, some say) of philosophy.

Thomas Henry Huxley
There are three great problems of our time.... One of these is that doctrine concerning the constitution of matter which, for want of a better name, I'll call "molecular"; the second is the doctrine of the conservation of energy; the third is the doctrine of evolution.

Thomas Henry Huxley
To say that an idea is necessary is simply to affirm that we cannot conceive the contrary; and the fact that we cannot conceive the contrary of any belief may be a presumption, but is certainly no proof, of its truth.

Thomas Henry Huxley
If every man possessed everything he wanted, and no one had the power to interfere with such possession; or if no man desired thatwhich could damage his fellow-man, justice would have no part to play in the universe.

Thomas Henry Huxley