Thomas Huxley
Thomas Huxley
Thomas Henry Huxley PC PRS FLSwas an English biologist, known as "Darwin's Bulldog" for his advocacy of Charles Darwin's theory of evolution...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionScientist
Date of Birth4 May 1825
determination past men
Of the few innocent pleasures left to men past middle life, the jamming of common sense down the throats of fools is perhaps the keenest.
teacher children real
I really see no harm which can come of giving our children a little knowledge of physiology. ... The instruction must be real, based upon observation, eked out by good explanatory diagrams and models, and conveyed by a teacher whose own knowledge has been acquired by a study of the facts; and not the mere catechismal parrot-work which too often usurps the place of elementary teaching.
beautiful men evil
Cosmic evolution may teach us how the good and evil tendencies of man may have come about; but, in itself, it is incompetent to furnish any better reason why what we call good is preferable to what we call evil than we had before. Some day, I doubt not, we shall arrive at an understanding of the evolution of the aesthetic faculty; but all the understanding in the world will neither increase nor diminish the force of the intuition that this is beautiful and that is ugly.
strong intelligent men
I know no study which is so unutterably saddening as that of the evolution of humanity, as it is set forth in the annals of history. Out of the darkness of prehistoric ages man emerges with the marks of his lowly origin strong upon him. He is a brute, only more intelligent than the other brutes, a blind prey to impulses, which as often as not led him to destruction; a victim to endless illusions, which make his mental existence a terror and a burden, and fill his physical life with barren toil and battle.
teaching people intellectual
People may talk about intellectual teaching, but what we principally want is the moral teaching.
science too-much possibility
I am too much of a skeptic to deny the possibility of anything...
men self political
If the perpetual oscillation of nations between anarchy and despotism is to be replaced by the steady march of self-restraining freedom, it will be because men will gradually bring themselves to deal with political, as they now deal with scientific questions.
common-sense prejudice sound-judgment
Common sense is science exactly in so far as it fulfills the ideal of common sense; that is, sees facts as they are, or at any rate, without the distortion of prejudice, and reasons from them in accordance with the dictates of sound judgment. And science is simply common sense at its best, that is, rigidly accurate in observation, and merciless to fallacy in logic.
thinking shadow half
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.
wise men true-or-false
The only question which any wise man can ask himself, and which any honest man will ask himself, is whether a doctrine is true or false.
truth-is mankind spread
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.
errors perfection evolution
It is an error to imagine that evolution signifies a constant tendency to increased perfection. That process undoubtedly involves a constant remodeling of the organism in adaptation to new conditions; but it depends on the nature of those conditions whether the direction of the modifications effected shall be upward or downward.
trust betrayal lying
The foundation of morality is to have done, once and for all, with lying.
lying facts world
A world of facts lies outside and beyond the world of words.