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

Thomas Huxley

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Thomas Huxley
Age: 70 †
Born: 1825
Born: May 4
Died: 1895
Died: June 29
Anatomist
Anthropologist
Biologist
Carcinologist
Ichthyologist
Linguist
Naturalist
Paleontologist
Philosopher
Photographer
Physiologist
Lexington
Kentucky
T. H. Huxley
Huxley
Natural
Rejection
Government
Absolutes
Great
Absolute
Every
Authority
Involved
Liberty
Education
Favourite
Knowledge
Advance

More quotes by Thomas Huxley

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Natural knowledge, seeking to satisfy natural wants, has found the ideas which can alone still spiritual cravings. I say that natural knowledge, in desiring to ascertain the laws of comfort, has been driven to discover those of conduct, and to lay the foundations of a new morality.
Thomas Huxley
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Ecclesiasticism in science is only unfaithfulness to truth
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It is not to be forgotten that what we call rational grounds for our beliefs are often extremely irrational attempts to justify our instincts.
Thomas Huxley
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A well-worn adage advises those who set out upon a great enterprise to count the cost, yet some of the greatest enterprises have succeeded because the people who undertook them did not count the cost.
Thomas Huxley
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If the perpetual oscillation of nations between anarchy and despotism is to be replaced by the steady march of self-restraining freedom, it will be because men will gradually bring themselves to deal with political, as they now deal with scientific questions.
Thomas Huxley
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The science, the art, the jurisprudence, the chief political and social theories, of the modern world have grown out of Greece and Rome-not by favour of, but in the teeth of, the fundamental teachings of early Christianity, to which science, art, and any serious occupation with the things of this world were alike despicable.
Thomas Huxley
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It is a popular delusion that the scientific enquirer is under an obligation not to go beyond generalisation of observed facts...but anyone who is practically acquainted with scientific work is aware that those who refuse to go beyond the facts, rarely get as far.
Thomas Huxley
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No slavery can be abolished without a double emancipation, and the master will benefit by freedom more than the freed-man.
Thomas Huxley
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Every living creature commences its existence under a form different from, and simpler than, that which it eventually attains.
Thomas Huxley
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Nothing great in science has ever been done by men, whatever their powers, in whom the divine afflatus of the truth-seeker was wanting.
Thomas Huxley
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The foundation of all 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 Huxley
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We are prone to see what lies behind our eyes, rather than what apprears before them.
Thomas Huxley
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Not far from the invention of fire we must rank the invention of doubt.
Thomas Huxley
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Veracity is the heart of morality.
Thomas Huxley
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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.
Thomas Huxley
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In truth, the laboratory is the forecourt of the temple of philosophy, and whoso has not offered sacrifices and undergone purification there has little chance of admission into the sanctuary.
Thomas Huxley
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Genius, as an explosive power, beats gunpowder hollow.
Thomas Huxley
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The best men of the best epochs are simply those who make the fewest blunders and commit the fewest sins.
Thomas Huxley
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The student of Nature wonders the more and is astonished the less, the more conversant he becomes with her operations but of all the perennial miracles she offers to his inspection, perhaps the most worthy of admiration is the development of a plant or of an animal from its embryo.
Thomas Huxley
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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 Huxley