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
believe doubt atheism
I doubt the fact, to begin with, but if it be so even, what is this but in grand words asking me to believe a thing because I like it.
animal intelligent men
Perhaps no order of mammals presents us with so extraordinary a series of gradations as this [step by step, from humans to apes to monkeys to lemurs] - leading us insensibly from the crown and summit of the animal creation down to creatures, from which there is but a step, as it seems, to the lowest, smallest, and least intelligent of the placental Mammalia. It is as if nature herself had forseen the arrogance of man, and with Roman severity had provided that his intellect, by its very triumphs, should call into prominence the slaves, admonishing the conqueror that he is but dust.
religious ignorance hands
The antagonism between science and religion, about which we hear so much, appears to me to be purely factitiousfabricated, on the one hand, by short-sighted religious people who confound a certain branch of science, theology, with religion; and, on the other, by equally short-sighted scientific people who forget that science takes for its province only that which is susceptible of clear intellectual comprehension; and that, outside the boundaries of that province, they must be content with imagination, with hope, and with ignorance
lying snakes cradle
Extinguished theologians lie about the cradle of every science, as strangled snakes beside that of Hercules
fire doubt invention
Not far from the invention of fire must rank the invention of doubt.
beautiful cat thinking
No one who has lived in the world as long as you & I have, can entertain the pious delusion that it is engineered upon principles of benevolence... the cosmos remains always beautiful and profoundly interesting in every corner-and if I had as many lives as a cat I would leave no corner unexplored.
strategy ought
Do what you can to do what you ought, and leave hoping and fearing alone.
matter reason consideration
In matters of intellect, follow your reason as far as it will take you, without regard for any other consideration.
spiritual rome civilization
Rome is the one great spiritual organisation which is able to resist and must, as a matter of life and death, the progress of science and modern civilization
errors sound helping
It sounds paradoxical to say the attainment of scientific truth has been effected, to a great extent, by the help of scientific errors.
dream science men
Surely it must be plain that an ingenious man could speculate without end on both sides, and find analogies for all his dreams. Nor does it help me to tell me that the aspirations of mankind
imagination limits probability
The scientific imagination always restrains itself within the limits of probability.
men benefits slavery
No slavery can be abolished without a double emancipation, and the master will benefit by freedom more than the freed-man.
thinking order speech
Freedom and order are not incompatible... truth is strength... free discussion is the very life of truth.