Thomas Henry Huxley Quotes

344 Sourced Quotes

Every art is full of conceptions which are special to itself; and, as the use of language is to convey our conceptions to one another, language must supply signs for those conceptions.

Thomas Henry Huxley
If a man cannot see a church, it is preposterous to take his opinion about its altar-piece or painted window.

Thomas Henry Huxley
I often wish that this phrase "applied science," had never been invented. For it suggests that there is a sort of scientific knowledge of direct practical use, which can be studied apart from another sort of scientific knowledge, which is of no practical utility, and which is termed "pure science." But there is no more complete fallacy than this.

Thomas Henry Huxley
Agnosticism, in fact, is not a creed, but a method, the essence of which lies in the rigorous application of a single principle.... Positively the principle may be expressed: In matters of the intellect, follow your reason as far as it will take you, without regard to any other consideration. And negatively: In matters of the intellect, do not pretend that conclusions are certain which are not demonstrated or demonstrable.

Thomas Henry Huxley
The whole of modern thought is steeped in science; it has made its way into the works of our best poets, and even the mere man of letters, who affects to ignore and despise science, is unconsciously impregnated with her spirit, and indebted for his best products to her methods.

Thomas Henry Huxley
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
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 Henry Huxley
Addressing myself to you, as teachers, I would say, mere book learning in physical science is a sham and a delusion — what you teach, unless you wish to be impostors, that you must first know; and real knowledge in science means personal acquaintance with the facts, be they few or many.

Thomas Henry Huxley
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 Henry Huxley
The practical men believed that the idol whom they worship - rule of thumb - has been the source of the past prosperity, and will suffice for the future welfare of the arts and manufactures.

Thomas Henry Huxley
Elohim was, in logical terminology, the genus of which ghosts, Chemosh, Dagon, Baal, and Jahveh were species. The Israelite believed Jahveh to be immeasurably superior to all other kinds of Elohim. The inscription on the Moabite stone shows that King Mesa held Chemosh to be, as unquestionably, the superior of Jahveh.

Thomas Henry Huxley
The very existence of society depends on the fact that every member of it tacitly admits he is not the exclusive possessor of himself, and that he admits the claim of the polity of which he forms a part, to act, to some extent, as his master.

Thomas Henry Huxley
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 Henry Huxley
The besetting sin of able men is impatience of contradiction and of criticism. Even those who do their best to resist the temptation, yield to it almost unconsciously and become the tools of toadies and flatterers. "Authorities," "disciples," and "schools" are the curse of science and do more to interfere with the work of the scientific spirit than all its enemies.

Thomas Henry Huxley
Assertion which outstrips evidence is not only a blunder but a crime.

Thomas Henry Huxley
If it [theory of evolution] had not existed, the paleontologist would have had to invent it.

Thomas Henry Huxley
There is far too much of the feeding-bottle in education and young people ought to be supplied with good intellectual food and then left to help themselves.

Thomas Henry Huxley
My business with my scientific friends is something like yours with the Puritans, nature being our Paul.

Thomas Henry Huxley
Science commits suicide when it adopts a creed.

Thomas Henry Huxley
Whatever practical people may say, this world is, after all, absolutely governed by ideas, and very often by the wildest and most hypothetical ideas.

Thomas Henry Huxley
Not only do I disbelieve in the need for compensation, but I believe that the seeking for rewards and punishments out of this lifeleads men to a ruinous ignorance of the fact that their inevitable rewards and punishments are here.

Thomas Henry Huxley
Accuracy is the foundation of everything else.

Thomas Henry Huxley
To the present generation, that is to say, the people a few years on the hither and thither side of thirty, the name of Charles Darwin stands alongside of those of Isaac Newton and Michael Faraday; and, like them, calls up the grand ideal of a searcher after truth and interpreter of Nature.

Thomas Henry Huxley
Ancient traditions, when tested by the severe processes of modern investigation, commonly enough fade away into mere dreams: but it is singular how often the dream turns out to have been a half-waking one, presaging a reality.

Thomas Henry Huxley
In nature, nothing is at rest, nothing is amorphous; the simplest particle of that which men in their blindness are pleased to call "brute matter" is a vast aggregate of molecular mechanisms performing complicated movements of immense rapidity, and sensitively adjusting themselves to every change in the surrounding world.

Thomas Henry Huxley
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 Henry Huxley
I am not afraid of the priests in the long-run. Scientific method is the white ant which will slowly but surely destroy their fortifications. And the importance of scientific method in modern practical life--always growing and increasing--is the guarantee for the gradual emancipation of the ignorant upper and lower classes, the former of whom especially are the strength of the priests.

Thomas Henry Huxley
Whatever evil voices may rage, Science, secure among the powers that are eternal, will do her work and be blessed.

Thomas Henry Huxley
Ecclesiasticism in science is only unfaithfulness to truth.

Thomas Henry Huxley
Placed side by side, a Humming-bird and a Tortoise, an Ostrich and a Crocodile, offer the strongest contrast, and a Stork seems to have little but animality in common with the Snake it swallows.

Thomas Henry Huxley