Best 270 quotes of Thomas Huxley on MyQuotes

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

Agnosticism, in fact, is not a creed, but a method, the essence of which lies in the rigorous application of a single principle. ... Positively the principle may be expressed: In matters of the intellect, follow your reason as far as it will take you, without regard to any other consideration. And negatively: In matters of the intellect, do not pretend that conclusions are certain which are not demonstrated or demonstrable.

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.

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.

A good man: body serves his will and enjoys hard work, clear intellect that understands the truths of nature, full of passion for life but controlled by his will, well-developed conscience, loves beauty in art and nature, despises inferior morality, respects himself and others.

All knowledge is good. It is impossible to say any fragment of knowledge, however insignificant or remote from one's ordinary pursuits, may not some day be turned to account.

All truth, in the long run, is only common sense clarified.

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.

A man's worst difficulties begin when he is able to do as he likes.

A man who speaks out honestly and fearlessly that which he knows, and that which he believes, will always enlist the good will and the respect, however much he may fail in winning the assent, of his fellow men.

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

And you very soon find out, if you have not found it out before, that patience and tenacity of purpose are worth more than twice their weight of cleverness.

Any one who has studied the history of science knows that almost every great step therein has been made by the "anticipation of Nature," that is, by the invention of hypotheses, which, though verifiable, often had very little foundation to start with; and, not unfrequently, in spite of a long career of usefulness, turned out to be wholly erroneous in the long run.

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.

As for your doctrines I am prepared to go to the Stake if requisite ... I trust you will not allow yourself to be in any way disgusted or annoyed by the considerable abuse & misrepresentation which unless I greatly mistake is in store for you... And as to the curs which will bark and yelp - you must recollect that some of your friends at any rate are endowed with an amount of combativeness which (though you have often & justly rebuked it) may stand you in good stead - I am sharpening up my claws and beak in readiness.

As if to demonstrate, by a striking example, the impossibility of erecting any cerebral barrier between man and the apes, Nature has provided us, in the latter animals, with an almost complete series of gradations from brains little higher than that of a Rodent, to brains little lower than that of Man.

As I have already urged, the practice of that which is ethically best - what we call goodness or virtue - involves a course of conduct which, in all respects, is opposed to that which leads to success in the cosmic struggle for existence. In place of ruthless selfassertion it demands self-restraint; in place of thrusting aside, or treading down, all competitors, it requires that the individual shall not merely respect , but shall help his fellows. It repudiates the gladiatorial theory of existence. Laws and moral precepts are directed to the end of curbing the cosmic process.

As to sagacity, I should say that his judgement respecting the warmest place and the softest cushion in a room is infallible, his punctuality at meal times is admirable, and his pertinacity in jumping on people's shoulders till they give him some of the best of what is going, indicates great firmness.

A well-worn adage advises those who set out upon a great enterprise to count the cost, yet some of the greatest enterprises have succeeded because the people who undertook them did not count the cost.

A world of facts lies outside and beyond the world of words.

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

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

Can any one deny that the old Israelites conceived Jahveh not only in the image of a man, but in that of a changeable, irritable, and, occasionally, violent man?

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

Claiming my right to follow whethersoever science should lead... it is as respectable to be modified monkey as modified dirt.

Common sense is science exactly in so far as it fulfills the ideal of common sense; that is, sees facts as they are, or at any rate, without the distortion of prejudice, and reasons from them in accordance with the dictates of sound judgment. And science is simply common sense at its best, that is, rigidly accurate in observation, and merciless to fallacy in logic.

Cosmic evolution may teach us how the good and evil tendencies of man may have come about; but, in itself, it is incompetent to furnish any better reason why what we call good is preferable to what we call evil than we had before. Some day, I doubt not, we shall arrive at an understanding of the evolution of the aesthetic faculty; but all the understanding in the world will neither increase nor diminish the force of the intuition that this is beautiful and that is ugly.

Creation,' in the ordinary sense of the word, is perfectly conceivable. I find no difficulty in conceiving that, at some former period, this universe was not in existence, and that it made its appearance in six days (or instantaneously, if that is preferred), in consequence of the volition of some preexisting Being.

Deduction, which takes us from the general proposition to facts again-teaches us, if I may so say, to anticipate from the ticket what is inside the bundle.

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.

Ecclesiasticism in science is only unfaithfulness to truth

Economy does not lie in sparing money, but in spending it wisely.

Education is the instruction of the intellect in the laws of Nature.

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.

Elohim was, in logical terminology, the genus of which ghosts, Chemosh, Dagon, Baal, and Jahveh were species. The Israelite believed Jahveh to be immeasurably superior to all other kinds of Elohim. The inscription on the Moabite stone shows that King Mesa held Chemosh to be, as unquestionably, the superior of Jahveh.

Every great advance in natural knowledge has involved the absolute rejection of authority.

Every living creature commences its existence under a form different from, and simpler than, that which it eventually attains.

Extinguished theologians lie about the cradle of every science, as strangled snakes beside that of Hercules

Fact I know; and Law I know; but what is this Necessity, save an empty shadow of my own mind's throwing?

Follow humbly wherever and to whatever abyss Nature leads, or you shall learn nothing.

For every man the world is as fresh as it was at the first day, and as full of untold novelties for him who has the eyes to see them.

For myself I say deliberately, it is better to have a millstone tied round the neck and be thrown into the sea than to share the enterprises of those to whom the world has turned, and will turn, because they minister to its weaknesses and cover up the awful realities which it shudders to look at.

For these two years I have been gravitating towards your doctrines, and since the publication of your primula paper with accelerated velocity. By about this time next year I expect to have shot past you, and to find you pitching into me for being more Darwinian than yourself. However, you have set me going, and must just take the consequences, for I warn you I will stop at no point so long as clear reasoning will take me further.

Freedom and order are not incompatible... truth is strength... free discussion is the very life of truth.

Friendship involves many things but, above all the power of going outside oneself and appreciating what is noble and loving in another.

From the dawn of exact knowledge to the present day, observation, experiment, and speculation have gone hand in hand; and, whenever science has halted or strayed from the right path, it has been, either because its votaries have been content with mere unverified or unverifiable speculation (and this is the commonest case, because observation and experiment are hard work, while speculation is amusing); or it has been, because the accumulation of details of observation has for a time excluded speculation.

Genius as an explosive power beats gunpowder hollow; and if knowledge, which should give that power guidance, is wanting, the chances are not small that the rocket will simply run amuck among friends and foes.

Genius, as an explosive power, beats gunpowder hollow.

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.

God give me strength to face a fact though it slay me.