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
bible fables creation
The Bible account of the creation of Eve is a preposterous fable.
bible self dogma
The dogma of the infallibility of the Bible is no more self-evident than is that of the infallibility of the popes.
thinking past people
Cherish [Science], venerate her, follow her methods faithfully ... and the future of this people will be greater than the past.
thinking monkeys dirt
...claiming my right to follow whethersoever science should lead... it is as respectable to be modified monkey as modified dirt.
passion self prejudice
Trust a witness in all matters in which neither his self-interest, his passions, his prejudices, nor the love of the marvellous is strongly concerned. When they are involved, require corroborative evidence in exact proportion to the contravention of probability by the thing testified.
strategy ought
Do what you can to do what you ought, and leave hoping and fearing alone.
matter reason consideration
In matters of intellect, follow your reason as far as it will take you, without regard for any other consideration.
errors sound helping
It sounds paradoxical to say the attainment of scientific truth has been effected, to a great extent, by the help of scientific errors.
hard-work hands details
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.
savages ghost without-god
There are savages without God in any proper sense of the word, but none without ghosts.
expression mind scientific-method
The method of scientific investigation is nothing but the expression of the necessary mode of working of the human mind. It is simply the mode in which all phenomena are reasoned about, rendered precise and exact.
horse philosophy fall
Missionaries, whether of philosophy or religion, rarely make rapid way, unless their preachings fall in with the prepossessions ofthe multitude of shallow thinkers, or can be made to serve as a stalking-horse for the promotion of the practical aims of the still larger multitude, who do not profess to think much, but are quite certain they want a great deal.
years intellectual progress
Material advancement has its share in moral and intellectual progress. Becky Sharp's acute remark that it is not difficult to be virtuous on ten thousand a year has its applications to nations; and it is futile to expect a hungry and squalid population to be anything but violent and gross.
simple sun bricks
Protoplasm, simple or nucleated, is the formal basis of all life. It is the clay of the potter: which, bake it and paint it as hewill, remains clay, separated by artifice, and not by nature from the commonest brick or sun-dried clod.