Thomas Huxley Quotes - Page 11

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• The antagonism between science and religion, about which we hear so much, appears to me to be purely factitiousfabricated, on the one hand, by short-sighted religious people who confound a certain branch of science, theology, with religion; and, on the other, by equally short-sighted scientific people who forget that science takes for its province only that which is susceptible of clear intellectual comprehension; and that, outside the boundaries of that province, they must be content with imagination, with hope, and with ignorance

  Thomas Huxley

  Religious, Ignorance, Hands

  Thomas Henry Huxley (1892). “Essays Upon Some Controverted Questions”

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• The method of scientific investigation is nothing but the expression of the necessary mode of working of the human mind.

  Thomas Huxley

  Expression, Mind, Scientific Method

  "Our Knowledge of the Causes of the Phenomena of Organic Nature". Book by Thomas Henry Huxley, 1863.

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• As a natural process, of the same character as the development of a tree from its seed, or of a fowl from its egg, evolution excludes creation and all other kinds of supernatural intervention.

  Thomas Huxley

  Character, Eggs, Tree

  Thomas Henry Huxley (1997). “The Major Prose of Thomas Henry Huxley”, p.287, University of Georgia Press

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• There is no alleviation for the sufferings of mankind except veracity of thought and of action, and the resolute facing of the world as it is when the garment of make-believe by which pious hands have hidden its uglier features is stripped off.

  Thomas Huxley

  Integrity, Believe, Hands

  Thomas Henry Huxley (1908). “Aphorisms and Reflections from the Works of Thomas Henry Huxley”, p.1, Library of Alexandria

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• I cannot but think that he who finds a certain proportion of pain and evil inseparably woven up in the life of the very worms, will bear his own share with more courage and submission.

  Thomas Huxley

  Life, Courage, Pain

  Thomas Henry Huxley (1870). “Lay Sermons, Addresses, and Reviews”, p.90, Adam, Stevenson

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• If then, said I, the question is put to me would I rather have a miserable ape for a grandfather or a man highly endowed by nature and possessing great means and influence and yet who employs those faculties for the mere purpose of introducing ridicule into a grave scientific discussion-I unhesitatingly affirm my preference for the ape.

  Thomas Huxley

  Mean, Men, Grandfather

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• Mathematics may be compared to a mill of exquisite workmanship, which grinds your stuff to any degree of fineness.

  Thomas Huxley

  Math, Stuff, Degrees

  Thomas Henry Huxley, Henrietta A. Huxley (1908). “Aphorisms and reflections”

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• I know of no department of natural science more likely to reward a man who goes into it thoroughly than anthropology. There is an immense deal to be done in the science pure and simple, and it is one of those branches of inquiry which brings one into contact with the great problems of humanity in every direction.

  Thomas Huxley

  Science, Simple, Men

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• It does not matter how many tumbles you have in this life, so long as you do not get dirty when you tumble; it is only the people who have to stop to be washed and made clean, who must necessarily lose the race. And I can assure you that there is the greatest practical benefit in making a few failures early in life. You learn that which is of inestimable importance

  Thomas Huxley

  Patience, Dirty, Race

  Thomas Henry Huxley (1893). “Science & education”

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• 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

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• I took thought, and invented what I conceived to be the appropriate title of 'agnostic'.

  Thomas Huxley

  Titles, Agnostic, Appropriate

  'Collected Essays' (1893-94) 'Agnosticism'

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• The science, the art, the jurisprudence, the chief political and social theories, of the modern world have grown out of Greece and Rome-not by favour of, but in the teeth of, the fundamental teachings of early Christianity, to which science, art, and any serious occupation with the things of this world were alike despicable.

  Thomas Huxley

  Art, Teaching, Rome

  Thomas Henry Huxley (2011). “Collected Essays”, p.315, Cambridge University Press

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• Only one absolute certainty is possible to man, namely that at any given moment the feeling which he has exists.

  Thomas Huxley

  Men, Feelings, Absolute Certainty

  Thomas Henry Huxley, Henrietta A. Huxley (1908). “Aphorisms and reflections”

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• The dogma of the infallibility of the Bible is no more self-evident than is that of the infallibility of the popes.

  Thomas Huxley

  Bible, Self, Dogma

  Thomas Henry Huxley (2012). “Collected Essays, Volume V Science and Christian Tradition: Essays”, p.40, tredition

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• The struggle for existence holds as much in the intellectual as in the physical world. A theory is a species of thinking, and its right to exist is coextensive with its power of resisting extinction by its rivals.

  Thomas Huxley

  Struggle, Science, Thinking

  Thomas Henry Huxley (2011). “Collected Essays”, p.229, Cambridge University Press

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• Cherish [Science], venerate her, follow her methods faithfully ... and the future of this people will be greater than the past.

  Thomas Huxley

  Past, Thinking, People

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• No one who has lived in the world as long as you & I have, can entertain the pious delusion that it is engineered upon principles of benevolence... the cosmos remains always beautiful and profoundly interesting in every corner-and if I had as many lives as a cat I would leave no corner unexplored.

  Thomas Huxley

  Beautiful, Cat, Thinking

  "Huxley: From Devil's Disciple to Evolution's High Priest". Book by Adrian Desmond (p. 588), 1997.

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• 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 Huxley

  Animal, Shoes, Scientific Method

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• 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 Huxley

  Simple, Bricks, Clay

  Thomas Henry Huxley (2008). “A Scientific Education”, p.99, Lulu.com

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• If a man cannot see a church, it is preposterous to take his opinion about its altar-piece or painted window.

  Thomas Huxley

  Men, Church, Pieces

  Thomas Henry Huxley (1872). “Evidence as to Man's Place in Nature”, p.119

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• 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”

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• Some experience of popular lecturing had convinced me that the necessity of making things plain to uninstructed people, was one of the very best means of clearing up the obscure corners in one's own mind.

  Thomas Huxley

  Mean, Science, People

  'Man's Place in Nature' (1894 ed.) preface

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• Matter and force are the two names of the one artist who fashions the living as well as the lifeless.

  Thomas Huxley

  Fashion, Artist, Names

  Thomas Henry Huxley (1872). “Lay Sermons, Addresses, and Reviews”, p.262

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• The world is neither wise nor just, but it makes up for all its folly and injustice by being damnably sentimental.

  Thomas Huxley

  Wise, World, Sentimental

  Leonard Huxley, Thomas Henry Huxley (2011). “Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley”, p.128, Cambridge University Press

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• To quarrel with the uncertainty that besets us in intellectual affairs would be about as reasonable as to object to live one's life with due thought for the morrow because no man can be sure he will alive an hour hence.

  Thomas Huxley

  Men, Intellectual, Alive

  Thomas Henry Huxley (2011). “Collected Essays”, p.206, Cambridge University Press

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