Thomas Henry Huxley Quotes

Sit down before fact as a little child, be prepared to give up every preconceived notion, follow humbly wherever and to whatever abysses nature leads, or you shall learn nothing. I have only begun to learn content and peace of mind since I have resolved at all risks to do this.

Try to learn something about everything and everything about something.

Extinguished theologians lie about the cradle of every science as the strangled snakes beside that of Hercules; and history records that whenever science and orthodoxy have been fairly opposed, the latter has been forced to retire from the lists, bleeding and crushed if not annihilated; scotched, if not slain.

I am too much of a skeptic to deny the possibility of anything.

What we call rational grounds for our beliefs are often extremely irrational attempts to justify our instincts.

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

The science, the art, the jurisprudence, the chief political and social theories, of the modern world have grown out of Greece and Rome - not by favour of, but in the teeth of, the fundamental teachings of early Christianity, to which science, art, and any serious occupation with the things of this world were alike despicable.

For once reality and his brains came into contact and the result was fatal.

Science is nothing but trained and organized common sense, differing from the latter only as a veteran may differ from a raw recruit: and its methods differ from those of common sense only as far as the guardsman's cut and thrust differ from the manner in which a savage wields his club.

The scientific spirit is of more value than its products, and irrationally held truths may be more harmful than reasoned errors.

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

Those who are ignorant of Geology, find no difficulty in believing that the world was made as it is; and the shepherd, untutored in history, sees no reason to regard the green mounds which indicate the site of a Roman camp, as aught but part and parcel of the primeval hill-side.

The occurrence of successive forms of life upon our globe is an historical fact, which cannot be disputed; and the relation of these successive forms, as stages of evolution of the same type, is established in various cases.