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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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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
Different
Attains
Every
Simpler
Creature
Eventually
Creatures
Existence
Living
Form
Commences

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Ecclesiasticism in science is only unfaithfulness to truth
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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.
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Only one absolute certainty is possible to man, namely that at any given moment the feeling which he has exists.
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The results of political changes are hardly ever those which their friends hope or their foes fear.
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Rome is the one great spiritual organisation which is able to resist and must, as a matter of life and death, the progress of science and modern civilization
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I have never been able to understand why pigeon-shooting at Hurlingham should be refined and polite, while a rat-killing match in Whitechapel is low.
Thomas Huxley
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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
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Creation,' in the ordinary sense of the word, is perfectly conceivable. I find no difficulty in conceiving that, at some former period, this universe was not in existence, and that it made its appearance in six days (or instantaneously, if that is preferred), in consequence of the volition of some preexisting Being.
Thomas Huxley
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Nothing can be more incorrect than the assumption one sometimes meets with, that physics has one method, chemistry another, and biology a third.
Thomas Huxley
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I have no faith, very little hope, and as much charity as I can afford.
Thomas Huxley
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... 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
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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.
Thomas Huxley
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Follow humbly wherever and to whatever abyss Nature leads, or you shall learn nothing.
Thomas Huxley
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If then, said I, the question is put to me would I rather have a miserable ape for a grandfather or a man highly endowed by nature and possessing great means and influence and yet who employs those faculties for the mere purpose of introducing ridicule into a grave scientific discussion-I unhesitatingly affirm my preference for the ape.
Thomas Huxley
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Every great advance in natural knowledge has involved the absolute rejection of authority.
Thomas Huxley
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Veracity is the heart of morality.
Thomas Huxley
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The only good that I can see in the demonstration of the truth of Spiritualism is to furnish an additional argument against suicide. Better live a crossing-sweeper than die and be made to talk twaddle by a medium hired at a guinea a séance.
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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We live in the hope and faith that, by the advance of molecular physics, we shall by-and-by be able to see our way as clearly from the constituents of water to the properties of water, as we are now able to deduce the operations of a watch from the form of its parts and the manner in which they are put together.
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It is not what we believe, but why we believe it. Moral responsibility lies in diligently weighing the evidence. We must actively doubt we have to scrutinize our views, not take them on trust. No virtue attached to blindly accepting orthodoxy, however 'venerable'.
Thomas Huxley