Thomas Huxley Quotes - Page 12

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• 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”

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• The population question is the real riddle of the sphinx, to which no political Oedipus has as yet found the answer. In view of the ravages of the terrible monster over-multiplication, all other riddle sink into insignificance.

  Thomas Huxley

  Real, Oedipus, Views

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• No man is any the worse off because another acquires wealth by trade, or by the exercise of a profession; on the contrary, he cannot have acquired his wealth except by benefiting others to the extent of what they considered to be its value.

  Thomas Huxley

  Exercise, Men, Wealth

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• If the twentieth century is to be better than the nineteenth, it will be because there are among us men who walk in Priestley's footsteps....To all eternity, the sum of truth and right will have been increased by their means; to all eternity, falsehoods and injustice will be the weaker because they have lived.

  Thomas Huxley

  Mean, Men, Injustice

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• No delusion is greater than the notion that method and industry can make up for lack of mother-wit, either in science or in practical life.

  Thomas Huxley

  Life, Mother, Method

  Thomas Henry Huxley (1908). “Aphorisms and Reflections from the Works of Thomas Henry Huxley”, p.5, Library of Alexandria

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• There are some men who are counted great because they represent the actuality of their own age, and mirror it as it is. Such an one was Voltaire, of whom it was epigrammatically said: "he expressed everybody's thoughts better than anyone." But there are other men who attain greatness because they embody the potentiality of their own day and magically reflect the future. They express the thoughts which will be everybody's two or three centuries after them. Such as one was Descartes.

  Thomas Huxley

  Science, Greatness, Men

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• If the perpetual oscillation of nations between anarchy and despotism is to be replaced by the steady march of self-restraining freedom, it will be because men will gradually bring themselves to deal with political, as they now deal with scientific questions.

  Thomas Huxley

  Men, Self, Political

  Thomas Henry Huxley (2006). “Huxley's Autobiography and Essays”, p.234, Cosimo, Inc.

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• The sceptics end in the infidelity which asserts the problem to be insoluble, or in the atheism which denies the existence of any orderly progress and governance of things: the men of genius propound solutions which grow into systems of Theology or of Philosophy, or veiled in musical language which suggests more than it asserts, take the shape of the Poetry of an epoch.

  Thomas Huxley

  Philosophy, Men, Infidelity

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

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• Science is nothing but trained and organized common sense differing from the latter only as a veteran may differ from a raw recruit: and its methods differ from those of common sense only as far as the guardsman's cut and thrust differ from the manner in which a savage wields his club.

  Thomas Huxley

  Cutting, Science, Common Sense

  "On the Educational Value of the Natural History Sciences" (1854)

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• 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”

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• Even in the important matter of cranial capacity, Men differ more widely from one another than they do from the Apes; while the lowest Apes differ as much, in proportion, from the highest, as the latter does from Man.

  Thomas Huxley

  Men, Important, Doe

  Thomas Henry Huxley (1997). “The Major Prose of Thomas Henry Huxley”, p.83, University of Georgia Press

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• I doubt the fact, to begin with, but if it be so even, what is this but in grand words asking me to believe a thing because I like it.

  Thomas Huxley

  Believe, Doubt, Atheism

  Thomas Henry Huxley (1997). “The Major Prose of Thomas Henry Huxley”, p.358, University of Georgia Press

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• Within the last fifty years, the extraordinary growth of every department of physical science has spread among us mental food of so nutritious and stimulating a character that a new ecdysis seems imminent.

  Thomas Huxley

  Character, Years, Growth

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

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• Misery is a match that never goes out.

  Thomas Huxley

  Misery

  Leonard Huxley, Thomas Henry Huxley (2011). “Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley”, p.53, Cambridge University Press

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• Every philosophical thinker hails it [The Origin of Species] as a veritable Whitworth gun in the armoury of liberalism.

  Thomas Huxley

  Philosophical, Gun, Philosopher

  "Lay Sermons, Addresses, and Reviews".

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• 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 Huxley

  Inspiring, Education, People

  Thomas Henry Huxley, Cyril Bibby (1971). “T. H. Huxley on Education”, p.10, Cambridge University Press

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• 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

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• 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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• Whatever part of the animal fabric whatever series of muscles, whatever viscera might be selected for comparison the result would be the same the lower Apes and the Gorilla would differ more than the Gorilla and the Man.

  Thomas Huxley

  Animal, Men, Would Be

  Thomas Henry Huxley (2011). “Collected Essays”, p.116, Cambridge University Press

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