Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–1895): British biologist and comparative anatomist. The library holds 554 quotes by Thomas Henry Huxley, drawn from Aphorisms and Reflections. The 60 below are the most quoted; search the library in the maker for the rest.
“Moderate well-being” may be no more the worthiest end of life than wealth. But if it is the best to be had in this queer world—it may be worth trying for.
My belief is, that no human being, and no society composed of human beings, ever did, or ever will, come to much, unless their conduct was governed and guided by the love of some ethical ideal.
The moral law, like the laws of physical nature, rests in the long run upon instinctive intuitions, and is neither more nor less “innate” and “necessary” than they are.
What would become of the garden if the gardener treated all the weeds and slugs and birds and trespassers as he would like to be treated if he were in their place?
When I was a mere boy, with a perverse tendency to think when I ought to have been playing, my mind was greatly exercised by this formidable problem, What would become of things if they lost their qualities?
Matter sets into them in the shape of food,—sets out of them in the shape of waste products. Their individuality lies in the constant maintenance of a characteristic form, not in the preservation of material identity.
I was once talking with a very eminent physician about the vis medicatrix naturae. “Stuff!” said he; “nine times out of ten nature does not want to cure the man: she wants to put him in his coffin.” The late Sir W. Gull.
If animals are conscious automata with souls, the soul stands related to the body as the bell of a clock to the works, and consciousness answers to the sound which the bell gives out when it is struck.
The struggle for existence holds as much in the intellectual as in the physical world. A theory is a species of thinking, and its right to exist is coextensive with its power of resisting extinction by its rivals.
All that man can do is to favour its formation by the real producers. There is no intrinsic relation between the amount of labour bestowed on an article and its value in exchange.
If we reduce the world to matter and motion, the matter is not “inert,” inasmuch as the same amount of motion affects different kinds of matter in different ways.
A man who has only half as much food as he needs is indubitably starved, even though his short rations consist of ortolans and are served upon gold plate.
Brooke obtained mud from the bottom of the North Atlantic, between Newfoundland and the Azores, at a depth of more than 10,000 feet, or two miles, by the help of this sounding apparatus.
Infinite benevolence need not have invented pain and sorrow at all—infinite malevolence would very easily have deprived us of the large measure of content and happiness that falls to our lot.
Thought is existence. More than that, so far as we are concerned, existence is thought, all our conceptions of existence being some kind or other of thought.
The man who steals or murders, breaks his implied contract with society, and forfeits all protection. He becomes an outlaw, to be dealt with as any other feral creature.
Without the second, there would be no good reason why one variation should disappear and another take its place; that is to say, there would be no selection.
The great mass of mankind are the “Poll,” who pick up just enough to get through without much discredit. Those who won’t learn at all are plucked; and then you can’t come up again.
Genius as an explosive power beats gunpowder hollow; and if knowledge, which should give that power guidance, is wanting, the chances are not small that the rocket will simply run amuck among friends and foes.
Without such shelter the followers of the “golden rule” may indulge in hopes of heaven, but they must reckon with the certainty that other people will be masters of the earth.
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.
At the present time the important question for England is not the duration of her coal, but the due comprehension of the truths of science, and the labours of her scientific men.
The vulgar antithesis of fact and theory is founded on a misconception of the nature of scientific theory, which is, or ought to be, no more than the expression of fact in a general form.
We know that his play is always fair, just and patient. But also we know, to our cost, that he never overlooks a mistake, or makes the smallest allowance for ignorance.
If the famous paint-root of Florida, which kills white pigs but not black ones, were abundant and certain in its action, black pigs might be substituted for white in the course of two or three years.
The Admiralty consequently ordered Captain Dayman, an old friend and shipmate of mine, to ascertain the depth over the whole line of the cable, and to bring back specimens of the bottom.
Dean Stanley told me he thought being made a bishop destroyed a man’s moral courage. I am inclined to think that the practice of the methods of political leaders destroys their intellect for all serious purposes.