Thomas Huxley Quotes - Page 8

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The clergy are at present divided into three sections: an immense body who are ignorant; a small proportion who know and are silent; and a minute minority who know and speak according to their knowledge.

Thomas Huxley

Ignorant, Three, Minorities

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Life is like walking along a crowded street--there always seem to be fewer obstacles to getting along on the opposite pavement--and yet, if one crosses over, matters are rarely mended.

Thomas Huxley

Life, Opposites, Matter

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

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Material advancement has its share in moral and intellectual progress. Becky Sharp's acute remark that it is not difficult to be virtuous on ten thousand a year has its applications to nations; and it is futile to expect a hungry and squalid population to be anything but violent and gross.

Thomas Huxley

Years, Intellectual, Progress

Thomas Henry Huxley (1882). “Science and Culture: And Other Essays”

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That which endures is not one or another association of living forms, but the process of which the cosmos is the product, and of which these are among the transitory expressions.

Thomas Huxley

Expression, Survival, Cosmos

Thomas Henry Huxley (1997). “The Major Prose of Thomas Henry Huxley”, p.286, University of Georgia Press

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The very existence of society depends on the fact that every member of it tacitly admits he is not the exclusive possessor of himself, and that he admits the claim of the polity of which he forms a part, to act, to some extent, as his master.

Thomas Huxley

Government, Society, Facts

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Give unqualified assent to no propositions but those the truth of which is so clear and distinct that they cannot be doubted. The enunciation of this first great commandment of science consecrated doubt.

Thomas Huxley

Giving, Doubt, Unqualified

Thomas Henry Huxley (1872). “Lay Sermons, Addresses, and Reviews”, p.322

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Mr. Darwin's hypothesis is not, so far as I am aware, inconsistent with any known biological fact; on the contrary, if admitted, the facts of Development, of Comparative Anatomy, of Geographical Distribution, and of Palaeontology, become connected together, and exhibit a meaning such as they never possessed before; and I, for one, am fully convinced that if not precisely true, that hypothesis is as near an approximation to the truth as, for example, the Copernican hypothesis was to the true theory of the planetary motions.

Thomas Huxley

Together, Example, Development

"Evidence as to Man's Place in Nature". Book by Thomas Henry Huxley. Chapter 2, p. 127, 1863.

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In truth, the laboratory is the forecourt of the temple of philosophy, and whoso has not offered sacrifices and undergone purification there has little chance of admission into the sanctuary.

Thomas Huxley

Philosophy, Sacrifice, Temples

Thomas Henry Huxley, Cyril Bibby (1971). “T. H. Huxley on Education”, p.166, Cambridge University Press

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Mix salt and sand, and it shall puzzle the wisest of men, with his mere natural appliances, to separate all the grains of sand from all the grains of salt; but a shower of rain will effect the same object in ten minutes.

Thomas Huxley

Nature, Rain, Science

Thomas Henry Huxley (1870). “Lay Sermons, Addresses, and Reviews”, p.296, Adam, Stevenson

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It seems safe to look forward to the time when the conception of attractive and repulsive forces, having served its purpose as a useful piece of scientific scaffolding, will be replaced by the deduction of the phenomena known as attraction and repulsion, from the general laws of motion.

Thomas Huxley

Law, Looks, Purpose

"The Advance of Science in the Last Half-Century" by Thomas Henry Huxley, 1889.

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You may read any quantity of books, and you may almost as ignorant as you were at starting, if you don't have, at the back of yourminds, the change for words in definite images which can only be acquired through the operation of your observing faculties on the phenomena of nature.

Thomas Huxley

Book, Ignorant, May

Thomas Henry Huxley (1877). “American Addresses: With a Lecture on the Study of Biology”, p.153

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Though under-instruction is a bad thing, it is not impossible that over-instruction may be worse.

Thomas Huxley

Education, May, Impossible

Leonard Huxley, Thomas Henry Huxley (2011). “Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley”, p.220, Cambridge University Press

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It may be well to remember that the highest level of moral aspiration recorded in history was reached by a few ancient Jews--Micah, Isaiah, and the rest--who took no count whatever of what might not happen to them after death. It is not obvious to me why the same point should not by and by be reached by the Gentiles.

Thomas Huxley

Afterlife, Levels, May

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

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People never will recollect that mere learning and mere cleverness are of next to no value in life, while energy and intellectual grip, the things that are inborn and cannot be taught, are everything.

Thomas Huxley

People, Intellectual, Energy

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

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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

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There is nothing of permanent value (putting aside a few human affections) nothing that satisfies quiet reflection--except the sense of having worked according to one's capacity and light to make things clear and get rid of cant and shams of all sorts.

Thomas Huxley

Truth, Reflection, Light

Thomas Henry Huxley (1920). “Readings from Huxley”

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The occurrence of successive forms of life upon our globe is an historical fact, which cannot be disputed; and the relation of these successive forms, as stages of evolution of the same type, is established in various cases.

Thomas Huxley

Historical, Facts, Evolution

Thomas Henry Huxley (2011). “Collected Essays”, p.102, Cambridge University Press

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If the hypothesis of evolution is true, living matter must have arisen from non-living matter; for by the hypothesis the condition of the globe was at one time such, that living matter could not have existed in it, life being entirely incompatible with the gaseous state.

Thomas Huxley

Matter, Evolution, States

"Biology, with Preludes on Current Events". Book by Joseph Cook, p. 39, 1878.

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The facts of variability, of the struggle for existence, of adaptation to conditions, were notorious enough; but none of us had suspected that the road to the heart of the species problem lay through them, until Darwin and Wallace dispelled the darkness.

Thomas Huxley

Struggle, Heart, Darkness

Leonard Huxley, Thomas Henry Huxley (2011). “Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley”, p.246, Cambridge University Press

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Unfortunately, it is much easier to shut one's eyes to good than to evil. Pain and sorrow knock at our doors more loudly than pleasure and happiness; and the prints of their heavy footsteps are less easily effaced.

Thomas Huxley

Pain, Eye, Doors

Thomas Henry Huxley (1997). “The Major Prose of Thomas Henry Huxley”, p.323, University of Georgia Press

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Natural knowledge, seeking to satisfy natural wants, has found the ideas which can alone still spiritual cravings. I say that natural knowledge, in desiring to ascertain the laws of comfort, has been driven to discover those of conduct, and to lay the foundations of a new morality.

Thomas Huxley

Spiritual, Science, Ideas

Thomas Henry Huxley (2006). “Huxley's Autobiography and Essays”, p.168, Cosimo, Inc.

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It is wrong for a man to say that he is certain of the objective truth of any proposition unless he can produce evidence which logically justifies that certainty. This is what Agnosticism asserts; and, in my opinion, it is all that is essential to Agnosticism. That which Agnostics deny and repudiate, as immoral, is the contrary doctrine, that there are propositions which men ought to believe without logically satisfactory evidence; and that reprobation ought to attach to the profession of disbelief in such inadequately supported propositions.

Thomas Huxley

Believe, Men, Atheism

Thomas Henry Huxley (2012). “Lectures and Essays”, p.247, tredition

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Better live a crossing-sweeper than die and be made to talk twaddle by a "medium" hired at a guinea a seance.

Thomas Huxley

Atheism, Guinea, Made

Thomas Henry Huxley (1903). “Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley”

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... 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 Huxley

Eye, Science, Sight

Thomas Henry Huxley (1910). “Huxley's Autobiography and Selected Essays from Lay Sermons”

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Living things have no inertia, and tend to no equilibrium.

Thomas Huxley

Life, Science, Equilibrium

Thomas Henry Huxley (1872). “Lay Sermons, Addresses, and Reviews”, p.73

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Born: May 4, 1825
Died: June 29, 1895
Occupation: Biologist
Cite this Page: Citation

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