Thomas Henry Huxley - Lay sermons, addresses, and reviews (1870)

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Every great advance in natural knowledge has involved the absolute rejection of authority.

Thomas Henry Huxley
No rational man, cognizant of the facts, believes that the average Negro is the equal, still less the superior, of the white man.....it is simply incredible to think that.....he will be able to compete successfully with his bigger-brained and smaller-jawed rival, in a contest which is to be carried on by thoughts and not by bites.

Thomas Henry Huxley
Our "Physick" and "Anatomy" have embraced such infinite varieties of being, have laid open such new worlds in time and space, have grappled, not unsuccessfully, with such complex problems, that the eyes of Vesalius and of Harvey might be dazzled by the sight of the tree that has grown out of their grain of mustard seed.

Thomas Henry Huxley
No mistake is so commonly made by clever people as that of assuming a cause to be bad because the arguments of its supporters are, to a great extent, nonsensical

Thomas Henry Huxley
The chessboard is the world; the pieces are the phenomena of the universe; the rules of the game are what we call the laws of Nature. The player on the other side is hidden from us. We know that his play is always fair, just, and patient. But also we know, to our cost, that he never overlooks a mistake, or makes the smallest allowance for ignorance.

Thomas Henry Huxley
Truly is has been said, that to a clear eye the smallest fact is a window through which the Infinite may be seen.

Thomas Henry Huxley
That man, I think, has had a liberal education, who has been so trained in youth that his body is the ready servant of his will.

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
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
There are savages without God in any proper sense of the word, but none without ghosts.

Thomas Henry Huxley
Teach a man to read and write, and you have put into his hands the great keys of the wisdom-box.

Thomas Henry Huxley