Thomas Huxley Quotes - Page 12

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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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• The most considerable difference I note among men is not in their readiness to fall into error, but in their readiness to acknowledge these inevitable lapses.

  Thomas Huxley

  Fall, Humility, Men

  Thomas Henry Huxley (2011). “Collected Essays”, p.157, Cambridge University Press

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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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• Agnosticism simply means that a man shall not say that he knows or believes that for which he has no grounds for professing to believe.

  Thomas Huxley

  Believe, Mean, Men

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• I am too much of a sceptic to deny the possibility of anything...

  Thomas Huxley

  Science, Too Much, Possibility

  Letter to Herbert Spencer, March 22, 1886.

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• Nothing great in science has ever been done by men, whatever their powers, in whom the divine afflatus of the truth-seeker was wanting.

  Thomas Huxley

  Truth, Men, Done

  Thomas Henry Huxley (2011). “Collected Essays”, p.56, Cambridge University Press

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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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• 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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• What men need is, as much knowledge as they can assimilate and organize into a basis for action; give them more and it may become injurious. One knows people who are as heavy and stupid from undigested learning .

  Thomas Huxley

  Stupid, Men, Giving

  "A Library of Universal Literature in Four Parts, Comprising Science, Biography, Fiction and the Great Orations".

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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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• 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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• 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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• Mathematics may be compared to a mill of exquisite workmanship, which grinds you stuff of any degree of fineness; but, nevertheless, what you get out depends upon what you put in; and as the grandest mill in the world will not extract wheat-flour from peascods, so pages of formulae will not get a definite result out of loose data.

  Thomas Huxley

  Work, Data, May

  "Geological Reform". Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society of London, Volume 25, 1869.

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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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• Only a scientific people can survive in a scientific future.

  Thomas Huxley

  People

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• It is a popular delusion that the scientific enquirer is under an obligation not to go beyond generalisation of observed facts...but anyone who is practically acquainted with scientific work is aware that those who refuse to go beyond the facts, rarely get as far.

  Thomas Huxley

  Science, Facts, Delusion

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• 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

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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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• 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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