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Thomas Huxley

49 quotes

Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–1895) was an English biologist and educator known as "Darwin's Bulldog" for his fierce advocacy of Charles Darwin's theory of evolution. A gifted writer and speaker, Huxley championed scientific education, coined the term "agnostic," and fought to make scientific knowledge accessible to ordinary people.

“If a little knowledge is dangerous, where is the man who has so much as to be out of danger?”

— Thomas Huxley

Knowledge

All Quotes by Thomas Huxley

“Of moral purpose I see no trace in Nature. That is an article of exclusively human manufacture and very much to our credit.”

— Thomas Huxley

Nature

“In scientific work, those who refuse to go beyond fact rarely get as far as fact.”

— Thomas Huxley

Work

“Science and literature are not two things, but two sides of one thing.”

— Thomas Huxley

Science

“The man of science has learned to believe in justification, not by faith, but by verification.”

— Thomas Huxley

Faith

“The only medicine for suffering, crime, and all other woes of mankind, is wisdom. Teach a man to read and write, and you have put into his hands the great keys of the wisdom box. But it is quite another thing to open the box.”

— Thomas Huxley

Wisdom

“The chess-board is the world, the pieces are the phenomena of the universe, the rules of the game are what we call the laws of Nature. The player on the other side is hidden from us.”

— Thomas Huxley

Nature

“It is one of the most saddening things in life that, try as we may, we can never be certain of making people happy, whereas we can almost always be certain of making them unhappy.”

— Thomas Huxley

Sad

“The great thing in the world is not so much to seek happiness as to earn peace and self-respect.”

— Thomas Huxley

Great

“The more rapidly truth is spread among mankind the better it will be for them. Only let us be sure that it is the truth.”

— Thomas Huxley

Truth

“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 Huxley

Science

“Every great advance in natural knowledge has involved the absolute rejection of authority.”

— Thomas Huxley

Great

“Economy does not lie in sparing money, but in spending it wisely.”

— Thomas Huxley

Money

“Science commits suicide when it adopts a creed.”

— Thomas Huxley

Science

“In science, as in art, and, as I believe, in every other sphere of human activity, there may be wisdom in a multitude of counsellors, but it is only in one or two of them.”

— Thomas Huxley

Art

“All truth, in the long run, is only common sense clarified.”

— Thomas Huxley

Truth

“Science is organized common sense where many a beautiful theory was killed by an ugly fact.”

— Thomas Huxley

Science

“The scientific imagination always restrains itself within the limits of probability.”

— Thomas Huxley

Imagination

“Science is nothing, but trained and organized common sense.”

— Thomas Huxley

Science

“I believe that history might be, and ought to be, taught in a new fashion so as to make the meaning of it as a process of evolution intelligible to the young.”

— Thomas Huxley

History

“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 Huxley

Faith