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Thomas Henry Huxley: 254 quotes15 likes

“God give me strength to face a fact though it slay me.”

As quoted in Nature Vol. 149 (Jan-Jun) 1942 p. 291, and A Philosophy for Our Time (1954) by Bernard Mannes Baruch, p. 13
1890s

“A small beginning has led us to a great ending. If I were to put the bit of chalk with which we started into the hot but obscure flame of burning hydrogen, it would presently shine like the sun. It seems to me that this physical metamorphosis is no false image of what has been the result of our subjecting it to a jet of fervent, though nowise brilliant, thought to-night. It has become luminous, and its clear rays, penetrating the abyss of the remote past, have brought within our ken some stages of the evolution of the earth. And in the shifting "without haste, but without rest" of the land and sea, as in the endless variation of the forms assumed by living beings, we have observed nothing but the natural product of the forces originally possessed by the substance of the universe.”

Thomas Henry Huxley

1860s, On a Piece of Chalk (1868)

“If a well were sunk at our feet in the midst of the city of Norwich, the diggers would very soon find themselves at work in that white substance almost too soft to be called rock, with which we are all familiar as "chalk."”

Thomas Henry Huxley

1860s, On a Piece of Chalk (1868)

“I can see no excuse for doubting that all are co-ordinated terms of Nature's great progression, from the formless to the formed—from the inorganic to the organic—from blind force to conscious intellect and will.”

Thomas Henry Huxley

Source: 1860s, Evidence as to Man's Place in Nature (1863), Ch.1 (1884 edition) http://books.google.com/books?id=1Z9DGVKfXuQC p. 28 <br class="br">Context: The whole analogy of natural operations furnishes so complete and crushing an argument against the intervention of any but what are termed secondary causes, in the production of all the phenomena of the universe; that, in view of the intimate relations between Man and the rest of the living world; and between the forces exerted by the latter and all other forces, I can see no excuse for doubting that all are co-ordinated terms of Nature's great progression, from the formless to the formed—from the inorganic to the organic—from blind force to conscious intellect and will.

“The man who is all morality and intellect, although he may be good and even great, is, after all, only half a man.”

Thomas Henry Huxley

Universities, Actual and Ideal (1874)
1870s

“I adopt Mr. Darwin's hypothesis, therefore, subject to the production of proof that physiological species may be produced by selective breeding; just as a physical philosopher may accept the undulatory theory of light, subject to the proof of the existence of the hypothetical ether; or as the chemist adopts the atomic theory, subject to the proof of the existence of atoms; and for exactly the same reasons, namely, that it has an immense amount of primâ facie probability: that it is the only means at present within reach of reducing the chaos of observed facts to order; and lastly, that it is the most powerful instrument of investigation which has been presented to naturalists since the invention of the natural system of classification and the commencement of the systematic study of embryology.”

Thomas Henry Huxley

Source: 1860s, Evidence as to Man's Place in Nature (1863), Ch.2, p. 128

“Not far from the invention of fire… we must rank the invention of doubt.”

Thomas Henry Huxley

Collected Essays vol 6, viii; quoted in T. H. Huxley: Scientist, Humanist, and Educator (1950) by Cyril Bibby, p. 257
1890s

“Social progress means a checking of the cosmic process at every step and the substitution for it of another, which may be called the ethical process; the end of which is not the survival of those who may happen to be the fittest, in respect of the whole of the conditions which obtain, but of those who are ethically the best.”

Thomas Henry Huxley

p, 125
Evolution and Ethics (1893)

“Rousseau's writings are so admirably adapted to touch both these classes that the effect they produced, especially in France, is easily intelligible.”

Thomas Henry Huxley

"On The Natural Inequality of Men" (January 1890) http://aleph0.clarku.edu/huxley/CE1/NatIneq.html <br class="br">1890s

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

Thomas Henry Huxley

Presidential Address at the British Association, "Biogenesis and abiogenesis" (1870) http://aleph0.clarku.edu/huxley/CE8/B-Ab.html; later published in Collected Essays, Vol. 8, p. 229 <br class="br">1870s

“The chalk is no unimportant element in the masonry of the earth’s crust, and it impresses a peculiar stamp, varying with the conditions to which it is exposed, on the scenery of the districts in which it occurs.”

Thomas Henry Huxley

1860s, On a Piece of Chalk (1868)

“The doctrine that all men are, in any sense, or have been, at any time, free and equal, is an utterly baseless fiction.”

Thomas Henry Huxley

"On The Natural Inequality of Men" (January 1890)
1890s

“I have endeavoured to show that no absolute structural line of demarcation, wider than that between the animals which immediately succeed us in the scale, can be drawn between the animal world and ourselves; and I may add the expression of my belief that the attempt to draw a physical distinction is equally futile, and that even the highest faculties of feeling and of intellect begin to germinate in lower forms of life.”

Thomas Henry Huxley

Source: 1860s, Evidence as to Man's Place in Nature (1863), Ch.2, p. 129

“There is no alleviation for the sufferings of mankind except veracity of thought and of action, and the resolute facing of the world as it is, when the garment of make-believe, by which pious hands have hidden its uglier features, is stripped off.”

Thomas Henry Huxley

Autobiography (1890) http://aleph0.clarku.edu/huxley/CE1/AutoB.html <br class="br">1890s

“For every man the world is as fresh as it was at the first day, and as full of untold novelties for him who has the eyes to see them.”

Thomas Henry Huxley

1860s, A Liberal Education and Where to Find It (1868)

“Identical in the physical processes by which he originates—identical in the early stages of his formation—identical in the mode of his nutrition before and after birth, with the animals which lie immediately below him in the scale—Man, if his adult and perfect structure be compared with theirs, exhibits, as might be expected, a marvellous likeness of organization. He resembles them as they resemble one another—he differs from them as they differ from one another.—And, though these differences and resemblances cannot be weighed and measured, their value may be readily estimated; the scale or standard of judgment, touching that value, being afforded and expressed by the system of classification of animals now current among zoologists.”

Thomas Henry Huxley

Source: 1860s, Evidence as to Man's Place in Nature (1863), Ch.2, p. 83

“Life is too short to occupy oneself with the slaying of the slain more than once.”

Thomas Henry Huxley

One of a series of exchanges when Richard Owen repeated generally repudiated claims about the Gorilla brain in a Royal Institution lecture. Athenaeum (13 April 1861) p. 498; Browne Vol 2, p. 159
1860s

“The only medicine for suffering, crime, and all the other woes of mankind, is wisdom.”

Thomas Henry Huxley

1860s, A Liberal Education and Where to Find It (1868)

“We have always thought that Mr. Darwin has unnecessarily hampered himself by adhering so strictly to his favourite "Natura non facit saltum." We greatly suspect that she does make considerable jumps in the way of variation now and then, and that these saltations give rise to some of the gaps which appear to exist in the series of known forms.”

Thomas Henry Huxley

1860s, Criticisms on "The Origin of the Species" (1864)

“Let us have "sweet girl graduates" by all means. They will be none the less sweet for a little wisdom; and the "golden hair" will not curl less gracefully outside the head by reason of there being brains within.”

Thomas Henry Huxley

"Emancipation — Black and White" (1865)
1860s