Famous quotes

Quotes by famous people, credited to who said them. Your own quotes must not match any of these. More are added all the time. 1,158,269 quotes Who coined it · How we decide

English Italiano Polski עברית Français Português فارسی Español 中文 Русский Deutsch العربية हिन्दी 日本語 Ελληνικά Latina

Thomas Henry Huxley

143 quotes

“To a person uninstructed in natural history, his country or sea-side 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 Henry Huxley (1825–1895) first seen 1854 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: On the Educational Value of the Natural History Sciences" (1854) p. 29
“A man has no reason to be ashamed of having an ape for his grandfather. If there was an ancestor whom I should feel shame in recalling it would rather be a man — a man of restless and versatile intellect — who not content with an equivocal success in his own sphere of activity, plunges into scientific questions with which he has no real acquaintance, only to obscure them with aimless rhetoric, and distract the attention of his hearers from the real point at issue by eloquent digressions and skilled appeals to religious prejudice.”
Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–1895) first seen 1860 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: One account of his famous response to Samuel Wilberforce, who during a debate had sarcastically questioned: "whether he was descended from an ape on his grandmother's side or his grandfather's" (30 June 1860), as quoted…
“Life is too short to occupy oneself with the slaying of the slain more than once.”
Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–1895) first seen 1861 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: One of a series of exchanges when Richard Owen repeated generally repudiated claims about the Gorilla brain in a Royal Institution lecture. Athenaeum (13 April 1861) p. 498; Browne Vol 2, p. 159
“The fact is he made a prodigious blunder in commencing the attack, and now his only chance is to be silent and let people forget the exposure. I do not believe that in the whole history of science there is a case of any man of reputation getting himself into such a contemptible position.”
Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–1895) first seen 1861 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: About Richard Owen's view on human and ape brains, in a letter to J.D. Hooker (27 April 1861)
“I have never had the least sympathy with the a priori reasons against orthodoxy, and I have by nature and disposition the greatest possible antipathy to all the atheistic and infidel school. Nevertheless I know that I am, in spite of myself, exactly what the Christian would call, and, so far as I can see, is justified in calling, atheist and infidel.”
Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–1895) first seen 1863 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to Charles Kingsley (6 May 1863)
“The method of scientific investigation is nothing but the expression of the necessary mode of working of the human mind.”
Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–1895) first seen 1863 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Our Knowledge of the Causes of the Phenomena of Organic Nature" (1863)
“Let us have "sweet girl graduates" by all means. They will be none the less sweet for a little wisdom; and the "golden hair" will not curl less gracefully outside the head by reason of there being brains within.”
Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–1895) first seen 1865 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Emancipation — Black and White" (1865)
“M. Comte's philosophy, in practice, might be compendiously described as Catholicism minus Christianity.”
Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–1895) first seen 1868 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: On the Physical Basis of Life" (1868)
“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 peascod, so pages of formulae will not get a definite result out of loose data.”
Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–1895) first seen 1869 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Geological Reform", Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society of London, Vol. 25 (1869); as reprinted in Huxley, Discourses, Biological and Geological essays (1909), pp. 335–336
“I neither deny nor affirm the immortality of man. I see no reason for believing in it, but, on the other hand, I have no means of disproving it.”
Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–1895) said by 1895 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Science has taught... 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 harmonise with my aspirations.”
Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–1895) said by 1895 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 Henry Huxley (1825–1895) said by 1895 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Life cannot exist without a certain conformity to the surrounding universe — that conformity involves a certain amount of happiness in excess of pain. In short, as we live we are paid for living.”
Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–1895) said by 1895 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The absolute justice of the system of things is as clear to me as any scientific fact. The gravitation of sin to sorrow is as certain as that of the earth to the sun, and more so–for experimental proof of the fact is within reach of us all–nay, is before us all in our own lives, if we had but the eyes to see it.”
Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–1895) said by 1895 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The greater part of the substance of the following Essays has already been published in the form of Oral Discourses, addressed to widely different audiences, during the past three years. Upon the subject of the second Essay, I delivered six Lectures to the Working Men in 1860, and two, to the members of the Philosophical Institution of Edinburgh in 1862.”
Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–1895) said by 1895 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The whole analogy of natural operations furnishes so complete and crushing an argument against the intervention of any but what are termed secondary causes, in the production of all the phenomena of the universe; that, in view of the intimate relations between Man and the rest of the living world; and between the forces exerted by the latter and all other forces, I can see no excuse for doubting that all are co-ordinated terms of Nature's great progression, from the formless to the formed—from the inorganic to the organic—from blind force to conscious intellect and will.”
Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–1895) first seen 1884 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Ch.1 (1884 edition) p. 28
“The man-like Apes... have certain characters of structure and of distribution in common.”
Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–1895) said by 1895 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Sound knowledge respecting the habits and mode of life of the man-like Apes has been even more difficult of attainment than correct information regarding their structure.”
Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–1895) said by 1895 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The question of questions for mankind—the problem which underlies all others, and is more deeply interesting than any other—is the ascertainment of the place which Man occupies in nature and of his relations to the universe of things.”
Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–1895) said by 1895 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 Henry Huxley (1825–1895) said by 1895 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 Henry Huxley (1825–1895) said by 1895 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 Henry Huxley (1825–1895) said by 1895 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I now propose briefly to... set forth, in a form intelligible to those who possess no special acquaintance with anatomical science, the chief facts upon which all conclusions respecting the nature and the extent of the bonds which connect man with the brute world must be based: I shall then indicate the one immediate conclusion which, in my judgment, is justified by those facts, and I shall finally discuss the bearing of that conclusion upon the hypotheses which have been entertained respecting the Origin of Man.”
Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–1895) said by 1895 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Every living creature commences its existence under a form different from, and simpler than, that which it eventually attains.”
Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–1895) said by 1895 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Within the last half century, the labours of such men as Von Baer, Rathke, Reichert, Bischof, and Remak, have almost completely unravelled... the successive stages of development which... are now as well known to the embryologist as are the steps of the metamorphosis of the silk-worm moth to the school boy.”
Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–1895) said by 1895 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The student of development finds, not only that the chick commences its existence as an egg, primarily identical, in all essential respects, with that of the Dog, but that the yelk of this egg undergoes division—that the primitive groove arises, and that the contiguous parts of the germ are fashioned, by precisely similar methods into a young chick, which, at one stage of its existence, is so like the nascent Dog, that ordinary inspection would hardly distinguish the two. The history of the development of any other vertebrate animal, Lizard, Snake, Frog, or Fish, tells the same story.”
Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–1895) said by 1895 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Let us endeavour for a moment to disconnect our thinking selves from the mask of humanity; let us imagine ourselves scientific Saturnians, if you will, fairly acquainted with such animals as now inhabit the Earth, and employed in discussing the relations they bear to a new and singular 'erect and featherless biped,' which some enterprising traveller, overcoming the difficulties of space and gravitation, has brought from that distant planet for our inspection, well preserved, may be, in a cask of rum.”
Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–1895) said by 1895 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Is Man so different from any of these Apes that he must form an order by himself? Or does he differ less from them than they differ from one another, and hence must take his place in the same order with them?”
Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–1895) said by 1895 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“These examples... show that, in whatever proportion of its limbs the Gorilla differs from Man, the other Apes depart still more widely from the Gorilla and that, consequently, such differences of proportion can have no ordinal value.”
Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–1895) said by 1895 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Whether we take these characters then, or such minor ones as those which are derivable from the proportional length of the spines in the cervical vertebrae, and the like, there is no doubt whatsoever as to the marked difference between Man and the Gorilla; but there is as little, that equally marked differences, of the very same order, obtain between the Gorilla and the lower apes.”
Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–1895) said by 1895 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 Henry Huxley (1825–1895) said by 1895 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 Henry Huxley (1825–1895) said by 1895 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Regarded anatomically, the resemblances between the foot of Man and the foot of the Gorilla are far more striking and important than the differences. ...be the differences between the hand and foot of Man and those of the Gorilla what they may—the differences between those of the Gorilla and those of the lower Apes are much greater.”
Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–1895) said by 1895 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–1895) said by 1895 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“So far from the posterior lobe, the posterior cornu, and the hippocampus minor, being structures peculiar to and characteristic of man, as they have been over and over again asserted to be, even after the publication of the clearest demonstration of the reverse, it is precisely these structures which are the most marked cerebral characters common to man with the apes. They are among the most distinctly Simian peculiarities which the human organism exhibits.”
Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–1895) said by 1895 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“So far as cerebral structure goes... it is clear that Man differs less from the Chimpanzee or the Orang, than these do even from the Monkeys, and that the difference between the brains of the Chimpanzee and of Man is almost insignificant, when compared with that between the Chimpanzee brain and that of a Lemur.”
Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–1895) said by 1895 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“If Man be separated by no greater structural barrier from the brutes than they are from one another—then it seems to follow that if any process of physical causation can be discovered by which the genera and families of ordinary animals have been produced, that process of causation is amply sufficient to account for the origin of Man.”
Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–1895) said by 1895 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There is but one hypothesis regarding the origin of species of animals in general which has any scientific existence—that propounded by Mr. Darwin.”
Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–1895) said by 1895 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Lamarck, sagacious as many of his views were, mingled them with so much that was crude and even absurd, as to neutralize the benefit which his originality might have effected had he been a more sober and cautious thinker...”
Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–1895) said by 1895 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It cannot be doubted, I think, that Mr. Darwin has satisfactorily proved that what he terms selection, or selective modification, must occur, and does occur, in nature; and he has also proved to superfluity that such selection is competent to produce forms as distinct, structurally, as some genera even are. If the animated world presented us with none but structural differences, I should have no hesitation in saying that Mr. Darwin has demonstrated the existence of a true physical cause, amply competent to account for the origin of living species, and of man among the rest.”
Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–1895) said by 1895 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 Henry Huxley (1825–1895) said by 1895 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I have endeavoured to show that no absolute structural line of demarcation, wider than that between the animals which immediately succeed us in the scale, can be drawn between the animal world and ourselves; and I may add the expression of my belief that the attempt to draw a physical distinction is equally futile, and that even the highest faculties of feeling and of intellect begin to germinate in lower forms of life.”
Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–1895) said by 1895 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It appears to us to be one of the many peculiar merits of that [Mr. Darwin's] hypothesis that it involves no belief in a necessary and continual progress of organisms.”
Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–1895) said by 1895 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“So far from a gradual progress towards perfection forming any necessary part of the Darwinian creed, it appears to us that it is perfectly consistent with indefinite persistence in one state, or with a gradual retrogression.”
Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–1895) said by 1895 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We have always thought that Mr. Darwin has unnecessarily hampered himself by adhering so strictly to his favourite "Natura non facit saltum." We greatly suspect that she does make considerable jumps in the way of variation now and then, and that these saltations give rise to some of the gaps which appear to exist in the series of known forms.”
Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–1895) said by 1895 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–1895) said by 1895 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Education is the instruction of the intellect in the laws of Nature, under which name I include not merely things and their forces, but men 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. For me, education means neither more nor less than this. Anything which professes to call itself education must be tried by this standard, and if it fails to stand the test, I will not call it education, whatever may be the force of authority, or of numbers, upon the other side.”
Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–1895) said by 1895 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The only medicine for suffering, crime, and all the other woes of mankind, is wisdom.”
Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–1895) said by 1895 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“If a well were sunk at our feet in the midst of the city of Norwich, the diggers would very soon find themselves at work in that white substance almost too soft to be called rock, with which we are all familiar as "chalk".”
Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–1895) said by 1895 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The chalk is no unimportant element in the masonry of the earth’s crust, and it impresses a peculiar stamp, varying with the conditions to which it is exposed, on the scenery of the districts in which it occurs.”
Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–1895) said by 1895 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source