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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.

“I do not say think as I think, but think in my way. Fear no shadows, least of all in that great spectre of personal unhappiness which binds half the world to orthodoxy.”

— Thomas Huxley

Fear

All Quotes by Thomas Huxley

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

— Thomas Huxley

Imagination

“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

“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

“I take it that the good of mankind means the attainment, by every man, of all the happiness which he can enjoy without diminishing the happiness of his fellow men.”

— Thomas Huxley

Happiness

“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

“Time, whose tooth gnaws away everything else, is powerless against truth.”

— Thomas Huxley

Time

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

— Thomas Huxley

Science

“The results of political changes are hardly ever those which their friends hope or their foes fear.”

— Thomas Huxley

Fear

“History warns us that it is the customary fate of new truths to begin as heresies and to end as superstitions.”

— Thomas Huxley

History

“The great tragedy of science - the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact.”

— Thomas Huxley

Great

“Science has fulfilled her function when she has ascertained and enunciated truth.”

— Thomas Huxley

Science

“My business is to teach my aspirations to confirm themselves to fact, not to try and make facts harmonize with my aspirations.”

— Thomas Huxley

Business

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

— Thomas Huxley

Knowledge

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

— Thomas Huxley

Work

“Books are the money of Literature, but only the counters of Science.”

— Thomas Huxley

Money

“Proclaim human equality as loudly as you like, Witless will serve his brother.”

— Thomas Huxley

Equality

“The only freedom I care about is the freedom to do right the freedom to do wrong I am ready to part with on the cheapest terms to anyone who will take it of me.”

— Thomas Huxley

Freedom

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

— Thomas Huxley

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 Huxley

Faith

“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