Thomas Huxley Quotes About Authority

Quotes about: Authority

• The improver of natural knowledge absolutely refuses to acknowledge authority, as such. For him, skepticism is the highest of duties; blind faith the one unpardonable sin.

  Thomas Huxley

  Science, Sin, Blind

  Thomas Henry Huxley (2006). “Huxley's Autobiography and Essays”, p.176, Cosimo, Inc.

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

  Thomas Huxley

  Education, Knowledge, Authority And Power

  Thomas Henry Huxley, Cyril Bibby (1971). “T. H. Huxley on Education”, p.72, Cambridge University Press

• The ultimate court of appeal is observation and experiment... not authority.

  Thomas Huxley

  Thinking, Authority, Appeals

  "\Rhetoric and Incommensurability". Book by Randy Allen Harris (p. 228), 2005.

• What are the moral convictions most fondly held by barbarous and semi-barbarous people? They are the convictions that authority is the soundest basis of belief; that merit attaches to readiness to believe; that the doubting disposition is a bad one, and skepticism is a sin.

  Thomas Huxley

  Believe, Government, People

  Thomas Henry Huxley (1872). “Lay Sermons, Addresses, and Reviews”, p.17

• The mathematician starts with a few 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. The teaching of languages, at any rate as ordinarily practiced, is of the same general nature authority and tradition furnish the data, and the mental operations are deductive.

  Thomas Huxley

  Nature, Work, Teaching

  Thomas Henry Huxley (1872). “Lay Sermons, Addresses, and Reviews”, p.66

• 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 Huxley

  Education, Responsibility, Learning

• 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 Huxley

  School, Men, Yield

  Thomas Henry Huxley (1967). “The Essence of T. H. Huxley: Selections Form His Writings”

• Each such answer to the great question, invariably asserted by the followers of its propounder, if not by himself, to be complete and final, remains in high authority and esteem, it may be for one century, or it may be for twenty: but, as invariably, Time proves each reply to have been a mere approximation to the truth tolerable chiefly on account of the ignorance of those by whom it was accepted, and wholly intolerable when tested by the larger knowledge of their successors.

  Thomas Huxley

  Ignorance, Twenties, Finals

  Thomas Henry Huxley (1997). “The Major Prose of Thomas Henry Huxley”, p.66, University of Georgia Press

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