Thomas Huxley
Thomas Huxley
Thomas Henry Huxley PC PRS FLSwas an English biologist, known as "Darwin's Bulldog" for his advocacy of Charles Darwin's theory of evolution...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionScientist
Date of Birth4 May 1825
purpose credit moral
Of moral purpose I see no trace in Nature. That is an article of exclusively human manufacture and very much to our credit.
integrity trying facts
My business is to teach my aspirations to confirm themselves to fact, not to try and make facts harmonize with my aspirations.
things-in-life people unhappy
It is one of the most saddening things in life that, try as we may, we can never be certain of making people happy, whereas we can almost always be certain of making them unhappy.
science simple men
I know of no department of natural science more likely to reward a man who goes into it thoroughly than anthropology. There is an immense deal to be done in the science pure and simple, and it is one of those branches of inquiry which brings one into contact with the great problems of humanity in every direction.
eye sight space
... 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.
truth men done
Nothing great in science has ever been done by men, whatever their powers, in whom the divine afflatus of the truth-seeker was wanting.
firsts statistics hypothesis
It is the first duty of a hypothesis to be intelligible.
humble animal men
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.
motivation science open-minded
Follow humbly wherever and to whatever abyss Nature leads, or you shall learn nothing.
belief ethical idealism
My belief is that no human being or society composed of human beings ever did or ever will come to much unless their conduct was governed and guided by the love of some ethical ideal.
religion desire proposal
. . . I fail to find a trace [in Protestantism] of any desire to set reason free. The most that can be discovered is a proposal to change masters. From being a slave of the papacy, the intellect was to become the serf of the Bible.
freedom men likes
A man's worst difficulties begin when he is able to do as he likes.
stupid men giving
What men need is as much knowledge as they can organize for action; give them more and it may become injurious. Some men are heavy and stupid from undigested learning.
unfaithfulness
Ecclesiasticism in science is only unfaithfulness to truth