Thomas Huxley Quotes - Page 4

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• Make up your mind to act decidedly and take the consequences. No good is ever done in this world by hesitation.

  Thomas Huxley

  Self Confidence, Mind, Acting

  Leonard Huxley, Thomas Henry Huxley (2011). “Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley”, p.116, Cambridge University Press

  43 Copy quote

• Education is the instruction of the intellect in the laws of Nature, under which name I include not merely things and their forces, but people and their ways; and the fashioning of the affections and of the will into an earnest and loving desire to move in harmony with those laws.

  Thomas Huxley

  Education, Moving, Law

  Thomas Henry Huxley (1880). “On the Origin of Species; Or, The Causes of the Phenomena of Organic Nature. A Course of Six Lectures ...”

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• 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

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• Proclaim human equality as loudly as you like, Witless will serve his brother.

  Thomas Huxley

  Brother, Equality, Human Equality

  Thomas Henry Huxley (1901). “Collected Essays”

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• Our reverence for the nobility of manhood will not be lessened by the knowledge that man is in substance and in structure, one with the brutes; for he alone possesses the marvellous endowment of intelligible and rational speech whereby he has slowly accumulated and organized the experience which is almost wholly lost with the cessation of individual life in other animals; so that he now stands raised above it as on a mountain-top, far above the level of his humble fellows, and transfigured from his grosser nature by reflecting, here and there, a ray from the infinite source of truth.

  Thomas Huxley

  Humble, Animal, Men

  1880 Man's Place in Nature.

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• Perhaps no order of mammals presents us with so extraordinary a series of gradations as this [step by step, from humans to apes to monkeys to lemurs] - leading us insensibly from the crown and summit of the animal creation down to creatures, from which there is but a step, as it seems, to the lowest, smallest, and least intelligent of the placental Mammalia. It is as if nature herself had forseen the arrogance of man, and with Roman severity had provided that his intellect, by its very triumphs, should call into prominence the slaves, admonishing the conqueror that he is but dust.

  Thomas Huxley

  Intelligent, Men, Animal

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• I am content with nothing, restless and ambitious... and I despise myself for the vanity, which formed half the stimulus to my exertions. Oh would that I were one of those plodding wise fools who having once set their hand to the plough go on nothing doubting.

  Thomas Huxley

  Wise, Thinking, Vanity

  "Huxley: From Devil's Disciple to Evolution's High Priest". Book by Adrian Desmond (p. 84), 1997.

  53 Copy quote

• Agnosticism is not properly described as a "negative" creed, nor indeed as a creed of any kind, except in so far as it expresses absolute faith in the validity of a principle which is as much ethical as intellectual.

  Thomas Huxley

  Intellectual, Principles, Negative

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

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• I hated tobacco. I could have almost lent my support to any institution that had for its object the putting of tobacco smokers to death...I now feel that smoking in moderation is a comfortable and laudable practice, and is productive of good. There is no more harm in a pipe than in a cup of tea. You may poison yourself by drinking too much green tea, and kill yourself by eating too many beefsteaks. For my part, I consider that tobacco, in moderation, is a sweetener and equalizer of the temper.

  Thomas Huxley

  Drinking, Practice, Support

  16 Copy quote

• A man has no reason to be ashamed of having an ape for his grandfather. If there were an ancestor whom I should feel shame in recalling it would rather be a man who plunges into scientific questions with which he has no real acquaintance, only to obscure them by an aimless rhetoric.

  Thomas Huxley

  Real, Science, Men

  Quoted in Leonard Huxley, Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley (1900)

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• The best men of the best epochs are simply those who make the fewest blunders and commit the fewest sins.

  Thomas Huxley

  Men, Sin, Blunders

  Thomas Henry Huxley (1997). “The Major Prose of Thomas Henry Huxley”, p.277, University of Georgia Press

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• Do what you can to do what you ought, and leave hoping and fearing alone.

  Thomas Huxley

  Strategy, Ought

  Thomas Henry Huxley, Cyril Bibby (1971). “T. H. Huxley on Education”, p.134, Cambridge University Press

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• There is no sadder sight in the world than to see a beautiful theory killed by a brutal fact.

  Thomas Huxley

  Beautiful, Sight, World

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• Books are the money of Literature, but only the counters of Science.

  Thomas Huxley

  Money, Book, Reading

  Thomas Henry Huxley (2011). “Collected Essays”, p.213, Cambridge University Press

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• The saying that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing is, to my mind, a very dangerous adage. If knowledge is real and genuine, I do not believe that it is other than a very valuable posession, however infinitesimal its quantity may be. Indeed, if a little knowledge is dangerous, where is a man who has so much as to be out of danger?

  Thomas Huxley

  Real, Believe, Knowledge

  'Collected Essays' vol. 3 (1895) 'On Elementary Instruction in Physiology' (written 1877)

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• And when you cannot prove that people are wrong, but only that they are absurd, the best course is to let them alone.

  Thomas Huxley

  People, Absurd, Prove

  Thomas Henry Huxley (1997). “The Major Prose of Thomas Henry Huxley”, p.246, University of Georgia Press

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• A drop of water is as powerful as a thunder-bolt.

  Thomas Huxley

  Powerful, Water, Thunder

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• The rules of the game are what we call the laws of nature.

  Thomas Huxley

  Expanding Universe, Law, Games

  'Lay Sermons, Addresses, and Reviews' (1870) 'A Liberal Education'

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• I would rather be the offspring of two apes than be a man and afraid to face the truth.

  Thomas Huxley

  Men, Two, Religion

  "The Harvest of a Quiet Eye, A Selection of Scientific Quotations". Book edited by Alan L. Mackay, 1977.

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• I have never been able to understand why pigeon-shooting at Hurlingham should be refined and polite, while a rat-killing match in Whitechapel is low.

  Thomas Huxley

  Pigeons, Shooting, Rats

  Thomas Henry Huxley, Cyril Bibby (1971). “T. H. Huxley on Education”, p.120, Cambridge University Press

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• No slavery can be abolished without a double emancipation, and the master will benefit by freedom more than the freed-man.

  Thomas Huxley

  Men, Double Standard, Benefits

  Thomas Henry Huxley (1872). “Lay Sermons, Addresses, and Reviews”, p.21

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• To persons uninstructed in natural history, their country or seaside stroll is a walk through a gallery filled with wonderful works of art, nine-tenths of which have their faces turned to the wall.

  Thomas Huxley

  Education, Country, Art

  Thomas H. Huxley (1900). “A Library of Universal Literature in Four Parts, Comprising Science, Biography, Fiction and the Great Orations”

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• Science seems to me to teach in the highest and strongest manner the great truth which is embodied in the Christian conception of entire surrender to the will of God. Sit down before fact as a little child, be prepared to give up every preconceived notion, follow humbly wherever and to whatever abysses nature leads, or you shall learn nothing. I have only begun to learn content and peace of mind since I have resolved at all risks to do this.

  Thomas Huxley

  God, Christian, Nature

  Letter to Charles Kingsley, mathcs.clarku.edu. September 23, 1860.

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• People may talk about intellectual teaching, but what we principally want is the moral teaching.

  Thomas Huxley

  Teaching, People, Intellectual

  Leonard Huxley, Thomas Henry Huxley (2011). “Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley”, p.42, Cambridge University Press

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• The student of Nature wonders the more and is astonished the less, the more conversant he becomes with her operations; but of all the perennial miracles she offers to his inspection, perhaps the most worthy of admiration is the development of a plant or of an animal from its embryo.

  Thomas Huxley

  Animal, Miracle, Development

  Thomas Henry Huxley (2011). “Collected Essays”, p.29, Cambridge University Press

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