Thomas Henry Huxley

they will work as great a revolution

Physiology, Psychology, Ethics, Political Science, must submit to the same ordeal.

is only just dawning upon us. We do not yet see our way beyond generalities; and we are befogged by the obtrusion of false analogies and crude anticipations. But Astronomy, Physics, Chemistry, have all had to pass through similar phases

until the organized and highly developed sciences and arts of the present day have endowed man with a command over the course of non-human nature greater than that once attributed to the magicians. ...a right comprehension of the process …

the cosmic process in man has been restrained and otherwise modified by law and custom; in surrounding nature, it has been similarly influenced

In virtue of his intelligence the dwarf bends the Titan to his will.

Fragile reed as he may be, man

Social progress means a checking of the cosmic process at every step and the substitution for it of another, which may be called the ethical process; the end of which is not the survival of those who may happen to be the fittest, in …

ethical systems, in which the reasoning is rarely much more than a decent pretext for the adoption of foregone conclusions

Sacred customs, venerable dooms of ancestral wisdom, hallowed by tradition and professing to hold good for all time, are put to the question. Cultured reflection

Not far from the invention of fire... we must rank the invention of doubt.

God give me strength to face a fact though it slay me.

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 …

Try to learn something about everything and everything about something.

Abram, Abraham became By will divine Let pickled Brian's name Be changed to Brine!

The mediaeval university looked backwards: it professed to be a storehouse of old knowledge... The modern university looks forward: it is a factory of new knowledge.

There is no alleviation for the sufferings of mankind except veracity of thought and of action, and the resolute facing of the world as it is, when the garment of make-believe, by which pious hands have hidden its uglier features, is …

The doctrine that all men are, in any sense, or have been, at any time, free and equal, is an utterly baseless fiction.

Rousseau's writings are so admirably adapted to touch both these classes that the effect they produced, especially in France, is easily intelligible.

When I reached intellectual maturity and began to ask myself whether I was an atheist, a theist, or a pantheist; a materialist or an idealist; Christian or a freethinker; I found that the more I learned and reflected, the less ready was …

The extent of the region of the uncertain, the number of the problems the investigation of which ends in a verdict of not proven, will vary according to the knowledge and the intellectual habits of the individual agnostic.

From the point of view of the moralist the animal world is on about the same level as a gladiator's show. The creatures are fairly well treated, and set to fight—whereby the strongest, the swiftest and the cunningest live to fight another …

The foundation of 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.

I am too much of a sceptic to deny the possibility of anything — especially as I am now so much occupied with theology — but I don't see my way to your conclusion.