Top 200 Thomas Henry Huxley Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Try to learn something about everything and everything about something.”

— Thomas Henry Huxley

Featured in: Education Quotes, Learning Quotes, Lifelong Learning Quotes, Graduation Quotes, Witty Quotes

2. “Patience and tenacity are worth more than twice their weight of cleverness.”

— Thomas Henry Huxley

Featured in: Patience Quotes, Never Give Up Quotes

3. “The great end of life is not knowledge but action.”

— Thomas Henry Huxley

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

— Thomas Henry Huxley

5. “The rung of a ladder was never meant to rest upon, but only to hold a man’s foot long enough to enable him to put the other somewhat higher.”

— Thomas Henry Huxley

6. “Science is nothing, but trained and organized common sense.”

— Thomas Henry Huxley

7. “Science is simply common sense at its best.”

— Thomas Henry Huxley

8. “It is far better for a man to go wrong in freedom than to go right in chains.”

— Thomas Henry Huxley

9. “Thoughtfulness for others, generosity, modesty, and self-respect are the qualities which make a real gentleman or lady.”

— Thomas Henry Huxley

10. “Science and literature are not two things, but two sides of one thing.”

— Thomas Henry Huxley

11. “Sit down before fact as a little child, be prepared to give up every preconceived notion, follow humbly wherever and to whatever abysses nature leads, or you shall learn nothing. I have only begun to learn content and peace of mind since I have resolved at all risks to do this.”

— Thomas Henry Huxley

12. “It is not who is right, but what is right, that is of importance.”

— Thomas Henry Huxley

13. “Veracity is the heart of morality.”

— Thomas Henry Huxley

14. “Economy does not lie in sparing money, but in spending it wisely.”

— Thomas Henry Huxley

15. “Action is the catalyst that creates accomplishments. It is the path that takes us from uncrafted hopes to realized dreams.”

— Thomas Henry Huxley

16. “Skepticism is the highest duty and blind faith the one unpardonable sin.”

— Thomas Henry Huxley

17. “The known is finite, the unknown infinite; intellectually we stand on an islet in the midst of an illimitable ocean of inexplicability. Our business in every generation is to reclaim a little more land, to add something to the extent and the solidity of our possessions.”

— Thomas Henry Huxley

18. “The birth of science was the death of superstition.”

— Thomas Henry Huxley

19. “The secret of genius is to carry the spirit of childhood into maturity.”

— Thomas Henry Huxley

20. “I am too much of a skeptic to deny the possibility of anything...”

— Thomas Henry Huxley

21. “Life is too short to occupy oneself with the slaying of the slain more than once.”

— Thomas Henry Huxley

22. “Science is simply common sense at its best, that is, rigidly accurate in observation, and merciless to fallacy in logic.”

— Thomas Henry Huxley

23. “If a little knowledge is dangerous, where is the man who has so much as to be out of danger?”

— Thomas Henry Huxley

24. “Learn what is true in order to do what is right.”

— Thomas Henry Huxley

25. “Perhaps the most valuable result of all education is the ability to make yourself do the thing you have to do, when it ought to be done, whether you like it or not. It is the first lesson that ought to be learned and however early a man’s training begins, it is probably the last lesson that he learns thoroughly.”

— Thomas Henry Huxley

26. “The method of scientific investigation is nothing but the expression of the necessary mode of working of the human mind. It is simply the mode in which all phenomena are reasoned about, rendered precise and exact.”

— Thomas Henry Huxley

27. “The man of science has learned to believe in justification, not by faith, but by verification.”

— Thomas Henry Huxley

28. “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.”

— Thomas Henry Huxley

29. “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.”

— Thomas Henry Huxley

30. “Education is the instruction of the intellect in the laws of Nature.”

— Thomas Henry Huxley

31. “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.”

— Thomas Henry Huxley

32. “We live in a world which is full of misery and ignorance, and the plain duty of each and all of us is to try to make the little corner he can influence somewhat less miserable and somewhat less ignorant than it was before he entered.”

— Thomas Henry Huxley

33. “The most considerable difference I note among men is not in their readiness to fall into error, but in their readiness to acknowledge these inevitable lapses.”

— Thomas Henry Huxley

34. “Logical consequences are the scarecrows of fools and the beacons of wise men.”

— Thomas Henry Huxley

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

— Thomas Henry Huxley

36. “I have no faith, very little hope, and as much charity as I can afford.”

— Thomas Henry Huxley

37. “Man’s Place in Nature.”

— Thomas Henry Huxley

38. “Follow humbly wherever and to whatever abyss Nature leads, or you shall learn nothing.”

— Thomas Henry Huxley

39. “Do what you can to do what you ought, and leave hoping and fearing alone.”

— Thomas Henry Huxley

40. “Education is the instruction of the intellect in the laws of Nature, under which name I include not merely things and their forces, but people and their ways; and the fashioning of the affections and of the will into an earnest and loving desire to move in harmony with those laws.”

— Thomas Henry Huxley

41. “All truth, in the long run, is only common sense clarified.”

— Thomas Henry Huxley

42. “The only people, scientific or other, who never make mistakes are those who do nothing.”

— Thomas Henry Huxley

43. “It is because the body is a machine that education is possible. Education is the formation of habits, a superinducing of an artificial organization upon the natural organization of the body.”

— Thomas Henry Huxley

44. “The dogma of the infallibility of the Bible is no more self-evident than is that of the infallibility of the popes.”

— Thomas Henry Huxley

45. “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.”

— Thomas Henry Huxley

46. “A man’s worst difficulties begin when he is able to do as he likes.”

— Thomas Henry Huxley

47. “The question of all questions for humanity, the problem which lies behind all others and is more interesting than any of them, is that of the determination of man’s place in nature and his relation to the cosmos.”

— Thomas Henry Huxley

48. “There is no sadder sight in the world than to see a beautiful theory killed by a brutal fact.”

— Thomas Henry Huxley

49. “Unity of plan everywhere lies hidden under the mask: of diversity of structure-the complex is everywhere evolved out of the simple.”

— Thomas Henry Huxley

50. “True science and true religion are twin sisters, and the separation of either from the other is sure to prove the death of both. Science prospers exactly in proportion as it is religious; and religion flourishes in exact proportion to the scientific depth and firmness of its basis.”

— Thomas Henry Huxley