T. H. Huxley Quotes

Science [is] that wonderfully convenient personification of the opinions, at a certain date, of Professors X, Y, and Z....

The more science discovers and the more comprehension it gives us of the mechanisms of existence, the more clearly does the mystery of existence itself stand out.

The only cure for science is more science, not less. We are suffering from the effects of a little science badly applied. The remedy is a lot of science, well applied.

... science must sometimes be treated as a possible enemy.

Liberties aren't given, they are taken.

What would it be like if I were free, not enslaved by my conditioning?

Every change is a menace to stability.

One can’t have something for nothing. Happiness has got to be paid for. You’re paying for it, Mr. Watson - paying because you happen to be too much interested in beauty.

That men do not learn very much from the lessons of history is the most important of all the lessons that history has to teach.

Nature is powerless to put asunder.

Power and wealth increase in direct proportion to a man's distance from the material objects from which wealth and power are ultimately derived.

...reality, however utopian, is something from which people feel the need of taking pretty frequent holidays....

However expressive, symbols can never be the things they stand for.

Orgy-porgy, round and round and round, beating one another in six-eight time.

Every one belongs to every one else.

Even the loneliest and most solitary in the universe... the very cold space dust... will eventually come together to form a star.

There was something called Christianity.

In fact a favourite problem of [John Tyndall] is—Given the molecular forces in a mutton chop, deduce Hamlet or Faust therefrom. He is confident that the Physics of the Future will solve this easily.

Even the best cookery book is no substitute for even the worst dinner.

We should be agnostic about those things for which there is no evidence. We should not hold beliefs merely because they gratify our desires for afterlife, immortality, heaven, hell, etc.

Words, words, words! They shut one off from the universe. Three quarters of the time one’s never in contact with things, only with the beastly words that stand for them.

What fun it would be, " he thought, "if one didn't have to think about happiness!

Choiceless awareness - at every moment and in all the circumstances of life - is the only effective meditation.

There's nothing like a re-creation of the event. Which is lucky. Think if one could fully remember perfume or kisses! How wearisome the reality of them would be!

I’m not denying their kindness, ” said the Rani. “But after all kindness isn’t the only virtue.

You pays your money and you takes your choice.

Feeling lurks in that interval of time between desire and its consummation.

Rams wrapped in thermogene beget no lambs.

Stability, ” insisted the Controller, “stability. The primal and the ultimate need. Stability. Hence all this.

Time moved for you not in quotidian beats, but in the slow rhythm the ages keep –

Shut lips, sleeping faces, Every stopped machine, The dumb and littered placesWhere crowds have been:.All silences rejoice, Weep (loudly or low), Speak-but with the voiceOf whom, I do not know.

We float in language like icebergs – four-fifths under the surface and only one-fifth of us projecting into the open air of immediate, non-linguistic experience.

The foundation of morality to have done, once and for all, with lying.

In silence, an act is an act is an act. Verbalized and discussed, it becomes an ethical problem ...

As a lover or a dipsomaniac, I've no doubt of your being a most fascinating specimen. But as a combiner of forms, you must honestly admit it, you're a bore.

There is no separate supernatural realm: all phenomena are part of one natural process of evolution.

[T]he vast majority of human beings are not interested in reason or satisfied with what it teaches.

There are things known and there are things unknown, and in between are the doors of perception.

Democracy is, among other things, the ability to say 'no' to the boss. But a man cannot say 'no' to the boss, unless he is sure of being able to eat when the boss's favour has been withdrawn.

If you believe in democracy, make arrangements to distribute property as widely as possible.

Happiness is a hard master - particularly other people's happiness.

A hell, from which one can be saved by a quibble that would carry no weight with a police magistrate, cannot be taken very seriously.

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.

That all men are equal is a proposition which at ordinary times no sane individual has ever given his assent.

Defined in psychological terms, a fanatic is a man who consciously overcompensates a secret doubt.

That is the secret of happiness and virtue - liking what you've got to do.

He liked to think of himself as a merciless vivisector probing into the palpitating entrails of his own soul.

We participate in tragedy. At comedy we only look.

What we feel and think and are is to a great extent determined by the state of our ductless glands and viscera.

Shearwater sighed, like a whale in the night.