Inspirational Quotations

Inspirational Quotes by Thomas Henry Huxley (English Biologist)

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.

More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Thomas Henry Huxley

It is not who is right, but what is right, that is of importance.
—Thomas Henry Huxley
Topics: Right, Rightness

The most considerable difference I note among men is not in their readiness to fall into error, but in their readiness to acknowledge these inevitable lapses.
—Thomas Henry Huxley
Topics: Failures, Success, Mistakes

The chessboard is the world; the pieces are the phenomena of the universe; the rules of the game are what we call laws of nature.
—Thomas Henry Huxley
Topics: Nature

The improver of natural knowledge absolutely refuses to acknowledge authority, as such. For him, skepticism is the highest of duties; blind faith the one unpardonable sin.
—Thomas Henry Huxley
Topics: Authority

Mathematics may be compared to a mill of exquisite workmanship, which grinds your stuff to any degree of fineness; but, nevertheless, what you get out depends on what you put in; and as the grandest mill in the world will not extract wheat flour from peas cods, so pages of formulae will not get a definite result out of loose data.
—Thomas Henry Huxley
Topics: Mathematics

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

The great thing in the world is not so much to seek happiness as to earn peace and self-respect.
—Thomas Henry Huxley
Topics: Self Respect

In scientific work, those who refuse to go beyond fact rarely get as far as fact.
—Thomas Henry Huxley
Topics: Scientists, Science

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.
—Thomas Henry Huxley
Topics: Science, Scientists

The Bible has been the Magna Carta of the poor and of the oppressed.
—Thomas Henry Huxley
Topics: Bible

God give me strength to face a fact though it slay me.
—Thomas Henry Huxley
Topics: Facts

All truth, in the long run, is only common sense clarified.
—Thomas Henry Huxley
Topics: Common Sense, Common Sense

The foundation of morality is to have done, once and for all, with lying.
—Thomas Henry Huxley
Topics: Morals

The world makes up for all its follies and injustices by being damnably sentimental.
—Thomas Henry Huxley
Topics: Emotions

Science commits suicide when it adopts a creed.
—Thomas Henry Huxley
Topics: Science

The great tragedy of science—the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact.
—Thomas Henry Huxley
Topics: Science

There is nothing of permanent value (putting aside a few human affections), nothing that satisfies quiet reflection, except the sense of having worked according to one’s capacity and light to make things clear and get rid of cant and shams of all sorts.
—Thomas Henry Huxley
Topics: Ability

Fact I know; and Law I know; but what is this Necessity, save an empty shadow of my own mind’s throwing?
—Thomas Henry Huxley
Topics: Necessity

Time, whose tooth gnaws away at everything else, is powerless against truth.
—Thomas Henry Huxley
Topics: Time Management, Time, Truth

Irrationally held truths may be more harmful than reasoned errors.
—Thomas Henry Huxley
Topics: Reason, Truth

Make up your mind to act decidedly and take the consequences. No good is ever done in this world by hesitation.
—Thomas Henry Huxley
Topics: Decisions, Procrastination, Inaction, Getting Going

Every great advance in natural knowledge has involved the absolute rejection of authority.
—Thomas Henry Huxley
Topics: Authority, Knowledge, Power

It is far better for a man to go wrong in freedom than to go right in chains.
—Thomas Henry Huxley
Topics: Freedom, Right, Better

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

My business is to teach my aspirations to confirm themselves to fact, not to try and make facts harmonize with my aspirations.
—Thomas Henry Huxley
Topics: Aspirations

A man’s worst difficulties begin when he is able to do as he likes.
—Thomas Henry Huxley
Topics: Difficulties

Science is organized common sense where many a beautiful theory was killed by an ugly fact.
—Thomas Henry Huxley
Topics: Science

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

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

No man is any the worse off because another acquires wealth by trade, or by the exercise of a profession; on the contrary, he cannot have acquired his wealth except by benefiting others to the extent of what they considered to be its value.
—Thomas Henry Huxley
Topics: Wealth

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