Quotes from T. H. Huxley

Our mental conditions are simply the symbols in consciousness of the changes which take place automatically in the organism; . . . to take an extreme illustration, the feeling we call volition is not the cause of a voluntary act, but the symbol of that state of the brain which is the immediate cause of that act. We are conscious automata.

The known is finite, the unknown is infinite; intellectually we stand on an islet in the midst of an illimitable ocean of inexplicability. Our business in every generation is to claim a little more land.

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.

The method of scientific investigation is nothing but the expression of the necessary mode of working of the human mind.

But the great tragedy of Science — the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact — which is so constantly being enacted under the eyes of philosophers...

The improver of natural knowledge absolutely refuses to acknowledge authority, as such. For him, skepticism is the highest of duties, blind faith the one unpardonable sin.

Extinguished theologians lie about the cradle of every science as the strangled snakes beside that of Hercules.

Size is not grandeur, and territory does not make a nation.

It is the customary fate of new truths to begin as heresies and to end as superstitions.

The chess board is the world, the pieces are the phenomena of the universe, the rules of the game are what we call the laws of Nature. The player on the other side is hidden from us. We know that his play is always fair, just, and patient. But also we know, to our cost, that he never overlooks a mistake, or makes the smallest allowance for ignorance.

For every man the world is as fresh as it was at the first day, and as full of untold novelties for him who has the eyes to see them.

M. Comte's philosophy in practice might be compendiously described as Catholicism minus Christianity.

Irrationally held truths may be more harmful than reasoned errors.

The thief and the murderer follow nature just as much as the philanthropist.

I cannot but think that he who finds a certain proportion of pain and evil inseparably woven up in the life of the very worms, will bear his own share with more courage and submission.

The saying that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing is, to my mind, a very dangerous adage. If knowledge is real and genuine, I do not believe that it is other than a very valuable possession, however infinitesimal its quantity may be. Indeed, if a little knowledge is dangerous, where is the man who has so much as to be out of danger?