Thomas Huxley Quotes About Belief

Quotes about: Belief

• I have endeavoured to show that no absolute structural line of demarcation, wider than that between the animals which immediately succeed us in the scale, can be drawn between the animal world and ourselves; and I may add the expression of my belief that the attempt to draw a physical distinction is equally futile, and that even the highest faculties of feeling and of intellect begin to germinate in lower forms of life.

  Thomas Huxley

  Animal, Expression, Feelings

  "Evidence as to Man's Place in Nature". Book by Thomas Henry Huxley. Chapter 2, p. 129, 1863.

• Science commits suicide when it adopts a creed.

  Thomas Huxley

  Suicide, Believe, Science

  Leonard Huxley, Thomas Henry Huxley (2011). “Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley”, p.422, Cambridge University Press

• My belief is that no human being or society composed of human beings ever did or ever will come to much unless their conduct was governed and guided by the love of some ethical ideal.

  Thomas Huxley

  Belief, Ethical, Idealism

  Thomas Henry Huxley (2011). “Collected Essays”, p.396, Cambridge University Press

• 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

• It is not to be forgotten that what we call rational grounds for our beliefs are often extremely irrational attempts to justify our instincts.

  Thomas Huxley

  Belief, Forgotten, Instinct

  Thomas Henry Huxley (2011). “Collected Essays”, p.310, Cambridge University Press

• Science ... warns me to be careful how I adopt a view which jumps with my preconceptions, and to require stronger evidence for such belief than for one to which I was previously hostile. My business is to teach my aspirations to conform themselves to fact, not to try and make facts harmonize with my aspirations.

  Thomas Huxley

  Science, Views, Atheism

  Thomas Henry Huxley (1908). “Life and Letters of Thomas Huxley, by His Son, Leonard Huxley”

• Oh devil! truth is better than much profit. I have searched over the grounds of my belief, and if wife and child and name and fame were all to be lost to me one after the other as the penalty, still I will not lie.

  Thomas Huxley

  Children, Lying, Names

  Thomas Henry Huxley (1997). “The Major Prose of Thomas Henry Huxley”, p.357, University of Georgia Press

• To say that an idea is necessary is simply to affirm that we cannot conceive the contrary; and the fact that we cannot conceive the contrary of any belief may be a presumption, but is certainly no proof, of its truth.

  Thomas Huxley

  Truth, Ideas, May

  Thomas Henry Huxley (1908). “Aphorisms and Reflections from the Works of Thomas Henry Huxley”, p.157, Library of Alexandria

• 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 Huxley

  Rejection, Mind, Growth

  Thomas Henry Huxley, Leonard Huxley (1900). “Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley”

• facebook
• twitter
• googleplus
• email
• linkedin

• facebook
• twitter
• googleplus
• email
• linkedin