68 Quotes By Thomas Huxley


In science, as in art, and, as I believe, in every other sphere of human activity, there may be wisdom in a multitude of counsellors, but it is only in one or two of them.
Thomas Huxley on art

Science is simply common sense at its best, that is, rigidly accurate in observation, and merciless to fallacy in logic.
Thomas Huxley on best

The best men of the best epochs are simply those who make the fewest blunders and commit the fewest sins.
Thomas Huxley on best

My business is to teach my aspirations to confirm themselves to fact, not to try and make facts harmonize with my aspirations.
Thomas Huxley on business

It is because the body is a machine that education is possible. Education is the formation of habits, a superinducing of an artificial organization upon the natural organization of the body.
Thomas Huxley on education

Proclaim human equality as loudly as you like, Witless will serve his brother.
Thomas Huxley on equality

My experience of the world is that things left to themselves don't get right.
Thomas Huxley on experience

The improver of natural knowledge absolutely refuses to acknowledge authority, as such. For him, skepticism is the highest of duties blind faith the one unpardonable sin.
Thomas Huxley on faith

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

The results of political changes are hardly ever those which their friends hope or their foes fear.
Thomas Huxley on fear

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.
Thomas Huxley on fear

Freedom and order are not incompatible... truth is strength... free discussion is the very life of truth.
Thomas Huxley on freedom

No slavery can be abolished without a double emancipation, and the master will benefit by freedom more than the freed-man.
Thomas Huxley on freedom

The only freedom I care about is the freedom to do right the freedom to do wrong I am ready to part with on the cheapest terms to anyone who will take it of me.
Thomas Huxley on freedom

Every great advance in natural knowledge has involved the absolute rejection of authority.
Thomas Huxley on great

The great tragedy of science - the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact.
Thomas Huxley on great

The great thing in the world is not so much to seek happiness as to earn peace and self-respect.
Thomas Huxley on great

I protest that if some great Power would agree to make me always think what is true and do what is right, on condition of being turned into a sort of clock and would up every morning before I got out of bed, I should instantly close with the offer.
Thomas Huxley on great

The great thing in the world is not so much to seek happiness as to earn peace and self-respect.
Thomas Huxley on happiness

I take it that the good of mankind means the attainment, by every man, of all the happiness which he can enjoy without diminishing the happiness of his fellow men.
Thomas Huxley on happiness