Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Tiny
Spiritually
Small
Generation
Boundless
Known
Ocean
Finite
Find
Infinite
Island
Generations
Islands
Drain
Amount
Unknown
Inexplicable
Task
Drains
Land
Tasks
Additional
Middle

More quotes by Thomas Huxley

Image
The secret of genius is to carry the spirit of childhood into maturity.
Thomas Huxley
Image
For myself I say deliberately, it is better to have a millstone tied round the neck and be thrown into the sea than to share the enterprises of those to whom the world has turned, and will turn, because they minister to its weaknesses and cover up the awful realities which it shudders to look at.
Thomas Huxley
Image
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
Image
There are savages without God in any proper sense of the word, but none without ghosts.
Thomas Huxley
Image
Thoughtfulness for others, generosity, modesty, and self-respect are the qualities which make a real gentleman or lady.
Thomas Huxley
Image
Oh devil! truth is better than much profit. I have searched over the grounds of my belief, and if wife and child and name and fame were all to be lost to me one after the other as the penalty, still I will not lie.
Thomas Huxley
Image
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.
Thomas Huxley
Image
Every living creature commences its existence under a form different from, and simpler than, that which it eventually attains.
Thomas Huxley
Image
Whatever part of the animal fabric whatever series of muscles, whatever viscera might be selected for comparison the result would be the same the lower Apes and the Gorilla would differ more than the Gorilla and the Man.
Thomas Huxley
Image
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.
Thomas Huxley
Image
There is assuredly no more effectual method of clearing up one's own mind on any subject than by talking it over, so to speak, with men of real power and grasp, who have considered it from a totally different point of view.
Thomas Huxley
Image
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
Image
... our Physick and Anatomy have embraced such infinite varieties of being, have laid open such new worlds in time and space, have grappled, not unsuccessfully, with such complex problems, that the eyes of Vesalius and of Harvey might be dazzled by the sight of the tree that has grown out of their grain of mustard seed.
Thomas Huxley
Image
Agnosticism simply means that a man shall not say that he knows or believes that for which he has no grounds for professing to believe.
Thomas Huxley
Image
God give me strength to face a fact though it slay me.
Thomas Huxley
Image
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
Image
Tolerably early in life I discovered that one of the unpardonable sins, in the eyes of most people, is for a man to go about unlabeled. The world regards such a person as the police do an unmuzzled dog.
Thomas Huxley
Image
My business is to teach my aspirations to confirm themselves to fact, not to try and make facts harmonize with my aspirations.
Thomas Huxley
Image
It is an error to imagine that evolution signifies a constant tendency to increased perfection. That process undoubtedly involves a constant remodeling of the organism in adaptation to new conditions but it depends on the nature of those conditions whether the direction of the modifications effected shall be upward or downward.
Thomas Huxley
Image
If individuality has no play, society does not advance if individuality breaks out of all bounds, society perishes.
Thomas Huxley