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
science past years
For these two years I have been gravitating towards your doctrines, and since the publication of your primula paper with accelerated velocity. By about this time next year I expect to have shot past you, and to find you pitching into me for being more Darwinian than yourself. However, you have set me going, and must just take the consequences, for I warn you I will stop at no point so long as clear reasoning will take me further.
character years growth
Within the last fifty years, the extraordinary growth of every department of physical science has spread among us mental food of so nutritious and stimulating a character that a new ecdysis seems imminent.
years intellectual progress
Material advancement has its share in moral and intellectual progress. Becky Sharp's acute remark that it is not difficult to be virtuous on ten thousand a year has its applications to nations; and it is futile to expect a hungry and squalid population to be anything but violent and gross.
duty east hunger learn mental order satisfy unable wind
Learn what is true, in order to do what is right, is the summing up of the whole duty of man, for all who are unable to satisfy their mental hunger with the east wind of authority.
medicine woes
The only medicine for suffering, crime, and all the other woes of mankind, is wisdom.
truth lying science
Irrationally held truths may be more harmful than reasoned errors.
inspiring freedom men
It is far better for a man to go wrong in freedom than to go right in chains.
harmful held truths
The scientific spirit is of more value than its products, and irrationally held truths may be more harmful than reasoned errors.
begin fate
It is the customary fate of new truths, to begin as heresies, and to end as superstitions.
beautiful great hypothesis science tragedy ugly
The great tragedy of science is the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact.
giving doubt unqualified
Give unqualified assent to no propositions but those the truth of which is so clear and distinct that they cannot be doubted. The enunciation of this first great commandment of science consecrated doubt.
truth ideas may
To say that an idea is necessary is simply to affirm that we cannot conceive the contrary; and the fact that we cannot conceive the contrary of any belief may be a presumption, but is certainly no proof, of its truth.
life-is-too-short slaying oneself
Life is too short to occupy oneself with the slaying of the slain more than once.
savages ghost without-god
There are savages without God in any proper sense of the word, but none without ghosts.