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
graduation witty educational
Try to learn something about everything and everything about something.
inspiring freedom men
It is far better for a man to go wrong in freedom than to go right in chains.
truth lying science
Irrationally held truths may be more harmful than reasoned errors.
drinking practice support
I hated tobacco. I could have almost lent my support to any institution that had for its object the putting of tobacco smokers to death...I now feel that smoking in moderation is a comfortable and laudable practice, and is productive of good. There is no more harm in a pipe than in a cup of tea. You may poison yourself by drinking too much green tea, and kill yourself by eating too many beefsteaks. For my part, I consider that tobacco, in moderation, is a sweetener and equalizer of the temper.
shooting rats able
I have never been able to understand why pigeon-shooting at Hurlingham should be refined and polite, while a rat-killing match in Whitechapel is low.
ladders off-to-college focus-on-goals
The rung of a ladder was never meant to rest upon.
apes bishops ancestor
I'd rather have an ape for an ancestor than a bishop.
different form existence
Every living creature commences its existence under a form different from, and simpler than, that which it eventually attains.
strategy ought
Do what you can to do what you ought, and leave hoping and fearing alone.
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.
savages ghost without-god
There are savages without God in any proper sense of the word, but none without ghosts.
rejection growth mind
I conceive that the leading characteristic of the nineteenth century has been the rapid growth of the scientific spirit, the consequent application of scientific methods of investigation to all the problems with which the human mind is occupied, and the correlative rejection of traditional beliefs which have proved their incompetence to bear such investigation.
afterlife levels may
It may be well to remember that the highest level of moral aspiration recorded in history was reached by a few ancient Jews--Micah, Isaiah, and the rest--who took no count whatever of what might not happen to them after death. It is not obvious to me why the same point should not by and by be reached by the Gentiles.
greatness men two
There are some men who are counted great because they represent the actuality of their own age, and mirror it as it is. Such an one was Voltaire, of whom it was epigrammatically said: "he expressed everybody's thoughts better than anyone." But there are other men who attain greatness because they embody the potentiality of their own day and magically reflect the future. They express the thoughts which will be everybody's two or three centuries after them. Such as one was Descartes.