Thomas Henry Huxley

1825–1895 · British biologist and comparative anatomist

Topics: learning, debugging, complexity, life

• If the hypothesis of evolution is true, living matter must have arisen from non-living matter; for by the hypothesis the condition of the globe was at one time such, that living matter could not have existed in it, life being entirely incompatible with the gaseous state.

  — Thomas Henry Huxley

• Every living creature commences its existence under a form different from, and simpler than, that which it eventually attains.

  — Thomas Henry Huxley

• The improver of natural knowledge absolutely refuses to acknowledge authority, as such. For him, scepticism is the highest of duties; blind faith the one unpardonable sin.

  — Thomas Henry Huxley

• Not far from the invention of fire... we must rank the invention of doubt.

  — Thomas Henry Huxley

• The foundation of morality is to have done, once and for all, with lying; to give up pretending to believe that for which there is no evidence, and repeating unintelligible propositions about things beyond the possibilities of knowledge.

  — Thomas Henry Huxley

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

  — Thomas Henry Huxley

• The question of questions for mankind—the problem which underlies all others, and is more deeply interesting than any other—is the ascertainment of the place which Man occupies in nature and of his relations to the universe of things.

  — Thomas Henry Huxley

• All truth, in the long run, is only common sense clarified.

  — Thomas Henry Huxley

• The mediaeval university looked backwards: it professed to be a storehouse of old knowledge... The modern university looks forward: it is a factory of new knowledge.

  — Thomas Henry Huxley

• Sit down before fact as a little child, be prepared to give up every preconceived notion, follow humbly wherever and to whatever abysses nature leads, or you shall learn nothing. I have only begun to learn content and peace of mind since I have resolved at all risks to do this.

  — Thomas Henry Huxley

• The extent of the region of the uncertain, the number of the problems the investigation of which ends in a verdict of not proven, will vary according to the knowledge and the intellectual habits of the individual agnostic.

  — Thomas Henry Huxley

• I do not mean to suggest that scientific differences should be settled by universal suffrage, but I do conceive that solid proofs must be met by something more than empty and unsupported assertions.

  — Thomas Henry Huxley

• The saying that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing is, to my mind, a very dangerous adage.

  — Thomas Henry Huxley

• The method of scientific investigation is nothing but the expression of the necessary mode of working of the human mind.

  — Thomas Henry Huxley

• To a person uninstructed in natural history, his country or sea-side stroll is a walk through a gallery filled with wonderful works of art, nine-tenths of which have their faces turned to the wall.

  — Thomas Henry Huxley

• Mathematics may be compared to a mill of exquisite workmanship, which grinds your stuff of any degree of fineness

  — Thomas Henry Huxley

• History shows that the human mind, fed by constant accessions of knowledge, periodically grows too large for its theoretical coverings, and bursts them asunder to appear in new habiliments

  — Thomas Henry Huxley

• In an ideal University, as I conceive it, a man should be able to obtain instruction in all forms of knowledge, and discipline in the use of all the methods by which knowledge is obtained.

  — Thomas Henry Huxley

• The known is finite, the unknown infinite; intellectually we stand on an islet in the midst of an illimitable ocean of inexplicability. Our business in every generation is to reclaim a little more land, to add something to the extent and the solidity of our possessions.

  — Thomas Henry Huxley

• 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