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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.

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
Half
Despise
Exertions
Hands
Ambitious
Plough
Nothing
Vanity
Doubting
Would
Content
Exertion
Thinking
Fool
Stimulus
Wise
Restless
Doubt
Formed
Ploughing
Hand
Fools
Plodding

More quotes by Thomas Huxley

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Surely there is a time to submit to guidance and a time to take one's own way at all hazards.
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In scientific work, those who refuse to go beyond fact rarely get as far as fact.
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Science is simply common sense at its best.
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I cannot say that I am in the slightest degree impressed by your bigness, or your material resources, as such. Size is not grandeur, and territory does not make a nation. The great issue, about which hangs true sublimity, and the terror of overhanging fate, is what are you going to do with all these things?
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Not far from the invention of fire we must rank the invention of doubt.
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It ought not to be unpleasant to say that which one honestly believes or disbelieves. That it so constantly is painful to do so, is quite enough obstacle to the progress of mankind in that most valuable of all qualities, honesty of word or of deed.
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[Scientists] have learned to respect nothing but evidence, and to believe that their highest duty lies in submitting to it however it may jar against their inclinations.
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Genius, as an explosive power, beats gunpowder hollow.
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The rung of a ladder was never meant to rest upon.
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The doctrine of transmigrationÂ… was a means of constructing a plausible vindication of the ways of the cosmos to man Â… none but very hasty thinkers will reject it on the grounds of inherent absurdity.
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The doctrine that all men are, in any sense, or have been, at any time, free and equal, is an utterly baseless fiction.
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Science reckons many prophets, but there is not even a promise of a Messiah.
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It sounds paradoxical to say the attainment of scientific truth has been effected, to a great extent, by the help of scientific errors.
Thomas Huxley
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Though under-instruction is a bad thing, it is not impossible that over-instruction may be worse.
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If every man possessed everything he wanted, and no one had the power to interfere with such possession or if no man desired thatwhich could damage his fellow-man, justice would have no part to play in the universe.
Thomas Huxley
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In matters of the intellect, do not pretend that conclusions are certain which are not demonstrated or demonstrable. That I take to be the agnostic faith, which if a man keep whole and undefiled, he shall not be ashamed to look the universe in the face, whatever the future may have in store for him.
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A drop of water is as powerful as a thunder-bolt.
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There are savages without God in any proper sense of the word, but none without ghosts.
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The only question which any wise man can ask himself, and which any honest man will ask himself, is whether a doctrine is true or false.
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The known is finite, the unknown infinite spiritually we find ourselves on a tiny island in the middle of a boundless ocean of the inexplicable. It is our task, from generation to generation, to drain a small amount of additional land.
Thomas Huxley