Thomas Henry Huxley Quotes

344 Sourced Quotes

Few literary dishes are less appetising than cold controversy; moreover, there is an air of unfairness about the presentation of only one side of a discussion, and a flavour of unkindness in the reproduction of "winged words," which, however appropriate at the time of their utterance, would find a still more appropriate place in oblivion.

Thomas Henry Huxley
There is not throughout Nature a law of wider application than this, that a body impelled by two forces takes the direction of their resultant.

Thomas Henry Huxley
Men of science do not pledge themselves to creeds; they are bound by articles of no sort; there is not a single belief that it is not a bounden duty with them to hold with a light hand and to part with cheerfully, the moment it is really proved to be contrary to any fact, great or small.

Thomas Henry Huxley
In the first place it is said — and I take this point first, because the imputation is too frequently admitted by Physiologists themselves — that Biology differs from the Physico-chemical and Mathematical sciences in being "inexact".

Thomas Henry Huxley
Do what you can to do what you ought, and leave hoping and fearing alone.

Thomas Henry Huxley
It sounds paradoxical to say the attainment of scientific truth has been effected, to a great extent, by the help of scientific errors.

Thomas Henry Huxley
It is very desirable to remember that evolution is not an explanation of the cosmic process, but merely a generalized statement of the method and results of that process.

Thomas Henry Huxley
No educational system can have a claim to permanence unless it recognizes the truth that education has two great ends to which everything else must be subordinated. The one of these is to increase knowledge; the other is to develop the love of right and the hatred of wrong.

Thomas Henry Huxley
My experience of the world is that things left to themselves don't get right.

Thomas Henry Huxley
My butterfly-net and pocket magnifying-glass are rare companions for a walk in the country.

Thomas Henry Huxley
If evidence that a thing may be, were equivalent to proof that it is, analogy might justify the construction of a naturalistic theology and demonology not less wonderful than the current supernatural; just as it might justify the peopling of Mars, or of Jupiter, with living forms to which terrestrial biology offers no parallel.

Thomas Henry Huxley
"medicine" not merely denotes a kind of knowledge, but it comprehends the various applications of that knowledge to the alleviation of the sufferings, the repair of the injuries, and the conservation of health, of living beings.

Thomas Henry Huxley
The teacher should always recollect that his business is to feed, and not to cram the intellect.

Thomas Henry Huxley
A scorner of physic once said that nature and disease may be compared to two men fighting, the doctor to a blind man with a club, who strikes into the melee, sometimes hitting the disease, and sometimes hitting nature.

Thomas Henry Huxley
The earth, from the time of the chalk to the present day, has been the theater of a series of changes as vast in their amount as they were slow in their progress. The area on which we stand has been first sea and then land for at least four alterations and has remained in each of these conditions for a period of great length.

Thomas Henry Huxley
If you tell me that an Ape differs from a Man because the latter has a soul and the ape has not, I can only say it may be so; but I should uncommonly like to know how [you know] either that the ape has not one or that the man

Thomas Henry Huxley
In the world of letters, learning and knowledge are one, and books are the source of both; whereas in science, as in life, learning and knowledge are distinct, and the study of things, and not of books, is the source of the latter.

Thomas Henry Huxley
Every belief is the product of two factors: the first is the state of mind to which the evidence in favor of that belief is presented; and the second is the logical cogency of the evidence itself.

Thomas Henry Huxley
It is given to few to add to the store of knowledge, to strike new springs of thought, or to shape new forms of beauty. But so sure as it is that men live not by bread, but by ideas, so sure is it that the future of the world lies in the hands of those who are able to carry the interpretation of nature a step further than their predecessors.

Thomas Henry Huxley
Living matter differs from other matter in degree and not in kind; the microcosm repeats the macrocosm; and one chain of causation connects the nebulous original of suns and planetary systems with the protoplasmic foundation of life and organisation.

Thomas Henry Huxley
Mathematical training is almost purely deductive. The mathematician starts with a few simple propositions, the proof of which is so obvious that they are called self-evident, and the rest of his work consists of subtle deductions from them.

Thomas Henry Huxley
Science, like Nature, may be driven out with a fork, ecclesiastical or other, yet she surely comes back again.

Thomas Henry Huxley
Forewarned is forearmed, says the proverb; and knowledge of the laws of nature is forewarning of that which we may expect to happen, when we have to deal with natural objects.

Thomas Henry Huxley
Next to being right in this world, the best of all things is to be clearly and definitely wrong, because you will come out somewhere. If you go buzzing about between right and wrong, vibrating and fluctuating, you come out nowhere; but if you are absolutely and thoroughly and persistently wrong, you must, some of these days, have the extreme good fortune of knocking your head against a fact, and that sets you all straight again.

Thomas Henry Huxley
Unfortunately, it is much easier to shut one's eyes to good than to evil. Pain and sorrow knock at our doors more loudly than pleasure and happiness; and the prints of their heavy footsteps are less easily effaced.

Thomas Henry Huxley
If scientific training is to yield its most eminent results, it must, I repeat, be made practical. That is to say, in explaining to a child the general phenomena of nature, you must, as far as possible, give reality to your teaching by object-lessons.

Thomas Henry Huxley
The choice lay between two absurdities and a middle condition of uneasy scepticism; which last, however unpleasant and unsatisfactory, was obviously the only justifiable state of mind under the circumstances.

Thomas Henry Huxley
The mind is so constituted that it does not willingly rest in facts and immediate causes, but seeks always after a knowledge of the remoter links in the chain of causation.

Thomas Henry Huxley
Protoplasm, simple or nucleated, is the formal basis of all life. It is the clay of the potter: which, bake it and paint it as hewill, remains clay, separated by artifice, and not by nature from the commonest brick or sun-dried clod.

Thomas Henry Huxley
It seems safe to look forward to the time when the conception of attractive and repulsive forces, having served its purpose as a useful piece of scientific scaffolding, will be replaced by the deduction of the phenomena known as attraction and repulsion, from the general laws of motion.

Thomas Henry Huxley