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
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 medieval university looked backwards; it professed to be a storehouse of old knowledge. The modern university looks forward, and is a factory of new knowledge.
—Thomas Henry Huxley
Topics: Education, Universities, Colleges
It is not who is right, but what is right, that is of importance.
—Thomas Henry Huxley
Topics: Rightness, Right
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
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
Try to learn something about everything and everything about something.
—Thomas Henry Huxley
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: Common Sense, Science
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
Nothing great in science has ever been done by men, whatever their powers, in whom the divine afflatus of the truth-seeker was wanting.
—Thomas Henry Huxley
Topics: Truth
There is no greater mistake than the hasty conclusion that opinions are worthless because they are badly argued.
—Thomas Henry Huxley
Topics: Opinions, Opinion
The secret of genius is to carry the spirit of childhood into maturity.
—Thomas Henry Huxley
Topics: Enthusiasm, Genius
I care not what subject is taught if only it be taught well.
—Thomas Henry Huxley
Topics: Education
Time, whose tooth gnaws away at everything else, is powerless against truth.
—Thomas Henry Huxley
Topics: Time, Truth, Time Management
Irrationally held truths may be more harmful than reasoned errors.
—Thomas Henry Huxley
Topics: Reason, Truth
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
No mistake is so commonly made by clever people as that of assuming a cause to be bad because the arguments of its supporters are, to a great extent, nonsensical
—Thomas Henry Huxley
Topics: Arguments
All truth, in the long run, is only common sense clarified.
—Thomas Henry Huxley
Topics: Common Sense, Common Sense
If a little knowledge is dangerous, where is the man who has so much as to be out of danger?
—Thomas Henry Huxley
Topics: Danger, Knowledge
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
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: Act, Will, Learn, Give, Facts, Follow, Learning, Nature
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
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
A man’s worst difficulties begin when he is able to do as he likes.
—Thomas Henry Huxley
Topics: Difficulties
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: Scientists, 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
Every great advance in natural knowledge has involved the absolute rejection of authority.
—Thomas Henry Huxley
Topics: Authority, Knowledge, Power
God give me strength to face a fact though it slay me.
—Thomas Henry Huxley
Topics: Facts
Logical consequences are the scarecrows of fools and the beacons of wise men.
—Thomas Henry Huxley
Topics: Action, Consequences, Logic
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
The great tragedy of science—the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis 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
For the aims of my own career, I want to promote the increase of natural knowledge, and to forward the application of scientific methods of investigation to all the problems of life, in the conviction that there is no alleviation for the sufferings of mankind except veracity of thought and action, and the resolute facing of the world as it is, when the garment of make-believe is stripped off.
—Thomas Henry Huxley
Topics: Truth, Knowledge, Integrity
Thoughtfulness for others, generosity, modesty, and self-respect are the qualities which make a real gentleman or lady, as distinguished from the veneered article which commonly goes by that name.
—Thomas Henry Huxley
Topics: Man
The foundation of morality is to have done, once and for all, with lying
—Thomas Henry Huxley
Topics: Morals
In scientific work, those who refuse to go beyond fact rarely get as far as fact.
—Thomas Henry Huxley
Topics: Scientists, Science
It does not matter how many tumbles you have in this life, so long as you do not get dirty when you tumble; it is only the people who have to stop to be washed and made clean, who must necessarily lose the race. And I can assure you that there is the greatest practical benefit in making a few failures early in life. You learn that which is of inestimable importance.
—Thomas Henry Huxley
Topics: Failure, Patience
Surely it must be plain that an ingenious man could speculate without end on both sides, and find analogies for all his dreams. Nor does it help me to tell me that the aspirations of mankind
—Thomas Henry Huxley
Topics: Science
A world of facts lies outside and beyond the world of words.
—Thomas Henry Huxley
Topics: Facts, Words
Patience and tenacity of purpose are worth more than twice their weight of cleverness.
—Thomas Henry Huxley
Topics: Patience, Persistence, Perseverance
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