Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95) was an English physiologist and zoologist. He is best remembered as the principal advocate of Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution. Huxley also coined the term ‘agnostic’ to describe his own religious beliefs that knowledge rested on scientific reasoning and that certainty about the existence of God was unachievable.
Born in Ealing, Middlesex, Huxley received just two years of formal schooling. From age 10, he educated himself, doing well enough to gain admission to Charing Cross Hospital to study medicine. He graduated in 1845 and became a surgeon on HMS Rattlesnake. He quickly made his mark as a marine biologist and studied fossils, especially those of fishes and reptiles.
Huxley was the protagonist of evolutionary theory in the controversies that followed the publication of Darwin’s On the Origin of Species (1859.) His aggressive public support of Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution earned him the nickname “Darwin’s bulldog.” He even participated in debates on Darwin’s behalf. When one challenger asked Huxley if he descended from apes on his grandfather’s side or his grandmother’s, he purportedly snapped, “If I would rather have a miserable ape for a grandfather or a man highly endowed by nature and possessed of great means and influence, and yet who employs those faculties for the mere purpose of introducing ridicule into a grave scientific discussion—I unquestionably affirm my preference for the Ape.”
One of the most eminent Victorian men of science, Huxley also made unsystematic forays into philosophy. He wrote on a wide array of topics, including science, religion, ethics, and politics. His notable writings include Evidence as to Man’s Place in Nature (1863,) The Physical Basis of Life (1868,) and On the Hypothesis that Animals are Automata (1874,) a monograph on David Hume (1879,) and the Romanes Lecture Ethics and Evolution (1893.)
Huxley was the grandfather of the philosopher Aldous Huxley, the Nobel-laureate physiologist and biophysicist Andrew Huxley, and the biologist Julian Huxley.
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The world makes up for all its follies and injustices by being damnably sentimental.
—Thomas Henry Huxley
Topics: Emotions
Sit down before fact as a little child, be prepared to give up every preconceived notion, follow humbly wherever and whatever abysses nature leads, or you will learn nothing.
—Thomas Henry Huxley
Topics: Learning, Facts, Nature
Every great advance in natural knowledge has involved the absolute rejection of authority.
—Thomas Henry Huxley
Topics: Power, Knowledge
Science is organized common sense where many a beautiful theory was killed by an ugly fact.
—Thomas Henry Huxley
Topics: Science
Perhaps the most valuable result of all education is the ability to make yourself to do the thing you have to do when it ought to be done whether you like it or not. It is the first lesson that ought to be learned and however early a person’s training begins, it is probably the last lesson a person learn thoroughly.
—Thomas Henry Huxley
Topics: Discipline, Education
The secret of genius is to carry the spirit of childhood into maturity.
—Thomas Henry Huxley
Topics: Enthusiasm, Genius
Science is nothing but trained and organized common sense, differing from the latter only as a veteran may from a raw recruit, and its methods differ from those of common sense, only as the guardsman’s cut and thrust differ from the manner in which a savage wields his club.
—Thomas Henry Huxley
Topics: Science, Common Sense
No delusion is greater than the notion that method and industry can make up for lack of mother-wit, either in science or in practical life.
—Thomas Henry Huxley
Topics: Science
The rung of a ladder was never meant to rest upon, but only to hold a man’s foot: long enough to enable him to put the other somewhat higher.
—Thomas Henry Huxley
Try to learn something about everything and everything about something.
—Thomas Henry Huxley
It is because the body is a machine that education is possible. Education is the formation of habits, a superinducing of an artificial organization upon the natural organization of the body.
—Thomas Henry Huxley
Topics: Education
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. … .
—Thomas Henry Huxley
My pet aphorism suffer fools gladly should be the guide of the Assistant Secretary, who, during the fortnight of his activity, has more little vanities and rivalries to smooth over and conciliate than other people meet with in a lifetime. Now you do not suffer fools gladly; on the contrary, you gladly make fools suffer. I do not say you are wrong; No tu quoque’; but that is where the danger of the explosion lies’; not in regard to the larger business of the Association.
—Thomas Henry Huxley
The great end of life is not knowledge, but action.
—Thomas Henry Huxley
Topics: Action, Knowledge, Procrastination, Inaction, Getting Going
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