Thomas Henry Huxley Quotes

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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
There is assuredly no more effectual method of clearing up one's own mind on any subject than by talking it over, so to speak, with men of real power and grasp, who have considered it from a totally different point of view.

Thomas Henry Huxley
Naught endures save the flow of energy and the rational order which pervades it.

Thomas Henry Huxley
Genius as an explosive power beats gunpowder hollow; and if knowledge, which should give that power guidance, is wanting, the chances are not small that the rocket will simply run amuck among friends and foes.

Thomas Henry Huxley
The vast results obtained by Science are won by no mystical faculties, by no mental processes other than those which are practicedby every one of us, in the humblest and meanest affairs of life. A detective policeman discovers a burglar from the marks made by his shoe, by a mental process identical with that by which Cuvier restored the extinct animals of Montmartre from fragments of their bones.

Thomas Henry Huxley
No man... who is endowed with a fair share of common sense, and not more than a fair share of vanity, will identify either contemporary or posthumous fame with the highest good.

Thomas Henry Huxley
I conceive that the leading characteristic of the nineteenth century has been the rapid growth of the scientific spirit, the consequent application of scientific methods of investigation to all the problems with which the human mind is occupied, and the correlative rejection of traditional beliefs which have proved their incompetence to bear such investigation.

Thomas Henry Huxley
Spencer's idea of a tragedy is a deduction killed by a fact.

Thomas Henry Huxley
The whole world, living and not living, is the result of the mutual interaction, according to laws, of the forces... possessed by the molecules of which the primitive nebulosity of the universe was composed.

Thomas Henry Huxley
The great benefit which a scientific education bestows, whether as training or as knowledge, is dependent upon the extent to which the mind of the student is brought into immediate contact with the facts — upon the degree to which he learns the habit of appealing directly to Nature.

Thomas Henry Huxley
I ask any one who has adopted the calling of an engineer, how much time he lost when he left school, because he had to devote himself to pursuits which were absolutely novel and strange, and of which he had not obtained the remotest conception from his instructors.

Thomas Henry Huxley
It is better to read a little and thoroughly than cram a crude undigested mass into my head, though it be great in quantity.

Thomas Henry Huxley
Science in England does everything — but pay. You may earn praise but not pudding.

Thomas Henry Huxley