Thomas Henry Huxley (birthed in Ealing in Middlesex, England, died in Eastbourne) was a British biologist that is called an early advocate of Darwin's reasoning. He has often been described as "Darwin's bulldog" on gunn of his protection of numerous (but not all) of Darwin's theories. He is specifically remembered for his terrible conversations with Bishop Samuel Wilberforce.
His scientific arguments with Richard Owen is an example of his vision. Huxley looked for resemblances in between human and gorillas skeletons, as well as he covered this and also made posters.
He remained in 1869 among the prodarwinister who started the journal Nature.
His essays offered him a credibility as one of the English language's biggest stylists. His language endowment aided to popularize Darwinism for the broad masses, in that he made use of an easy language that most people can comprehend.
Huxley suggested to be the initial individual who started to use words agnostic in 1869. He claimed that the churches declared to possess a special gnosis (knowledge) of God and of things come from. He asserted that he can not accept this since it was about training courses outside human assumption, which he consequently was agnostic.
Some later Christian apologieter Huxley calls the first atheistic evangelist, despite the fact that he made use of words agnostic as well as would not agree that he should be an atheist. He was, nonetheless, a strong challenger of virtually any type of type of organized religion, though he specifically went out versus Catholicism. Lenin said regarding him in his work Materialism and also empiriokritisisme that "In Huxley's situation ... agnosticism acts as a fig leaf for materialism. "
Thomas Henry Huxley, the father of Leonard Huxley as well as grandfather to Julian Huxley, who was among others was UNESCO's first supervisor as well as one of the International Humanist and Ethical Union's creators, and the author Aldous Huxley.
Our collection contains 65 quotes who is written / told by Thomas, under the main topics: Words of Wisdom.
"Economy does not lie in sparing money, but in spending it wisely"
"The only medicine for suffering, crime, and all the other woes of mankind, is wisdom"
"Science is nothing, but trained and organized common sense"
"The chess-board is the world, the pieces are the phenomena of the universe, the rules of the game are what we call the laws of Nature. The player on the other side is hidden from us"
"The Bible has been the Magna Carta of the poor and of the oppressed"
"The best men of the best epochs are simply those who make the fewest blunders and commit the fewest sins"
"Teach a child what is wise, that is morality. Teach him what is wise and beautiful, that is religion!"
"Surely there is a time to submit to guidance and a time to take one's own way at all hazards"
"Size is not grandeur, and territory does not make a nation"
"Sit down before fact as a little child, be prepared to give up every conceived notion, follow humbly wherever and whatever abysses nature leads, or you will learn nothing"
"Science reckons many prophets, but there is not even a promise of a Messiah"
"Science is simply common sense at its best, that is, rigidly accurate in observation, and merciless to fallacy in logic"
"No delusion is greater than the notion that method and industry can make up for lack of mother-wit, either in science or in practical life"
"My experience of the world is that things left to themselves don't get right"
"My business is to teach my aspirations to confirm themselves to fact, not to try and make facts harmonize with my aspirations"
"Misery is a match that never goes out"
"Make up your mind to act decidedly and take the consequences. No good is ever done in this world by hesitation"
"Logical consequences are the scarecrows of fools and the beacons of wise men"
"Learn what is true in order to do what is right"
"It is the customary fate of new truths, to begin as heresies, and to end as superstitions"
"It is one of the most saddening things in life that, try as we may, we can never be certain of making people happy, whereas we can almost always be certain of making them unhappy"
"It is not who is right, but what is right, that is of importance"
"It is not to be forgotten that what we call rational grounds for our beliefs are often extremely irrational attempts to justify our instincts"
"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"
"Irrationally held truths may be more harmful than reasoned errors"
"In scientific work, those who refuse to go beyond fact rarely get as far as fact"
"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"
"If a man cannot do brain work without stimulants of any kind, he had better turn to hand work it is an indication on Nature's part that she did not mean him to be a head worker"
"If a little knowledge is dangerous, where is the man who has so much as to be out of danger?"
"I took thought, and invented what I conceived to be the appropriate title of 'agnostic'"
"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"
"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"
"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"
"I believe that history might be, and ought to be, taught in a new fashion so as to make the meaning of it as a process of evolution intelligible to the young"
"I am content with nothing, restless and ambitious... and I despise myself for the vanity, which formed half the stimulus to my exertions. Oh would that I were one of those plodding wise fools who having once set their hand to the plough go on nothing doubting"
"History warns us that it is the customary fate of new truths to begin as heresies and to end as superstitions"
"Freedom and order are not incompatible... truth is strength... free discussion is the very life of truth"
"Every great advance in natural knowledge has involved the absolute rejection of authority"
"The more rapidly truth is spread among mankind the better it will be for them. Only let us be sure that it is the truth"
"The medieval university looked backwards; it professed to be a storehouse of old knowledge. The modern university looks forward, and is a factory of new knowledge"
"Science and literature are not two things, but two sides of one thing"
"There is no sea more dangerous than the ocean of practical politics none in which there is more need of good pilotage and of a single, unfaltering purpose when the waves rise high"
"There is but one right, and the possibilities of wrong are infinite"
"The world is neither wise nor just, but it makes up for all its folly and injustice by being damnably sentimental"
"The ultimate court of appeal is observation and experiment... not authority"
"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"
"The scientific spirit is of more value than its products, and irrationally held truths may be more harmful than reasoned errors"
"The scientific imagination always restrains itself within the limits of probability"
"The rung of a ladder was never meant to rest upon, but only to hold a man's foot long enough to enable him to put the other somewhat higher"
"The results of political changes are hardly ever those which their friends hope or their foes fear"
