Quotes by Thomas Henry Huxley

About Thomas Henry Huxley:

Thomas Henry Huxley was an English biologist (comparative anatomist), known as "Darwin's Bulldog" for his advocacy of Charles Darwin's theory of evolution.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

History warns us ... that it is the customary fate of new truths to begin as heresies and to end as superstitions.

Thomas Henry Huxley

Very few, even among those who have taken the keenest interest in the progress of the revolution in natural knowledge set afoot by the publication of the 'Origin of Species'; and who have watched, not without astonishment, the rapid and complete chan...

Thomas Henry Huxley

Those who are ignorant of Geology, find no difficulty in believing that the world was made as it is; and the shepherd, untutored in history, sees no reason to regard the green mounds which indicate the site of a Roman camp, as aught but part and parc...

Thomas Henry Huxley

That which struck the present writer most forcibly on his first perusal of the 'Origin of Species' was the conviction that Teleology, as commonly understood, had received its deathblow at Mr. 's hands. For the teleological argument runs thus: an orga...

Thomas Henry Huxley

According to Teleology, each organism is like a rifle bullet fired straight at a mark; according to , organisms are like grapeshot of which one hits something and the rest fall wide. For the teleologist an organism exists because it was made for the ...

Thomas Henry Huxley

The practice of that which is ethically best—what we call goodness or virtue—involves a course of conduct which, in all respects, is opposed to that which leads to success in the cosmic struggle for existence. In place of ruthless self-assertion ...

Thomas Henry Huxley

Let us understand, once for all, that the ethical progress of society depends, not on imitating the cosmic process, still less in running away from it, but in combating it.

Thomas Henry Huxley

In order to get over the ethical difficulties presented by the naive naturalism of many parts of those Scriptures, in the divine authority of which he firmly believed, Philo borrowed from the Stoics (who had been in like straits in respect of Greek m...

Thomas Henry Huxley

It appears now to be universally admitted that, before the exile, the Israelites had no belief in rewards and punishments after death, nor in anything similar to the Christian heaven and hell; but our story proves that it would be an error to suppose...

Thomas Henry Huxley

There are savages without God in any proper sense of the word, but none without ghosts.

Thomas Henry Huxley

And those who will carefully study the so-called 'Mosaic code' contained in the books of Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers, will see that, though Jahveh's prohibitions of certain forms of immorality are strict and sweeping, his wrath is quite as strongl...

Thomas Henry Huxley

Elohim was, in logical terminology, the genus of which ghosts, Chemosh, Dagon, Baal, and Jahveh were species. The Israelite believed Jahveh to be immeasurably superior to all other kinds of Elohim. The inscription on the Moabite stone shows that King...

Thomas Henry Huxley

Can any one deny that the old Israelites conceived Jahveh not only in the image of a man, but in that of a changeable, irritable, and, occasionally, violent man?

Thomas Henry Huxley

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, a...

Thomas Henry Huxley

The tendency to variation in living beings, which all admitted as a matter of fact; the selective influence of conditions, which no one could deny to be a matter of fact, when his attention was drawn to the evidence; and the occurrence of great geolo...

Thomas Henry Huxley

The question of the position of man, as an animal, has given rise to much disputation, with the result of proving that there is no anatomical or developmental character by which he is more widely distinguished from the group of animals most nearly al...

Thomas Henry Huxley

The occurrence of successive forms of life upon our globe is an historical fact, which cannot be disputed; and the relation of these successive forms, as stages of evolution of the same type, is established in various cases.

Thomas Henry Huxley

Wherever sufficiently numerous series of the remains of any given group, which has endured for a long space of time, are carefully examined, their morphological relations are never in discordance with the requirements of the doctrine of evolution, an...

Thomas Henry Huxley

There can be no doubt that the existing Fauna and Flora is but the last term of a long series of equally numerous contemporary species, which have succeeded one another, by the slow and gradual substitution of species for species, in the vast interva...

Thomas Henry Huxley

An interesting contrast between the geology of the present day and that of half a century ago, is presented by the complete emancipation of the modern geologist from the controlling and perverting influence of theology, all-powerful at the earlier da...

Thomas Henry Huxley

In the beginning of the eighteenth century, made the first serious attempt to apply the doctrine [ ] to the living world. In the latter part of it, , , and took up the work more vigorously and with better qualifications. The question of special creat...

Thomas Henry Huxley

Author Bio

  • NameThomas Henry Huxley
  • DescriptionEnglish biologist and comparative anatomist
  • BornMay 4, 1825
  • DiedJune 29, 1895
  • CountryUnited Kingdom
  • ProfessionBiologist; Linguist; Paleontologist; Translator
  • AwardsFellow Of The Royal Society; Copley Medal; Royal Medal