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Thomas Henry Huxley war ein britischer Biologe und vergleichender Anatom, Bildungsorganisator und Hauptvertreter des Agnostizismus, dessen Begriff er prägte und durchsetzte. Als einflussreicher Unterstützer des Empirismus David Humes und der Evolutionstheorie Charles Darwins hatte er zusätzlich zu seinen eigenen umfangreichen Forschungen, Lehrbüchern und Essays sehr großen Einfluss auf die Entwicklung der Naturwissenschaften im 19. Jahrhundert. Wikipedia  

✵ 4. Mai 1825 – 29. Juni 1895   •   Andere Namen Thomas Huxley
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Thomas Henry Huxley Berühmte Zitate

„Die Unsterblichkeit des Menschen streite ich weder ab noch bestätige ich sie. Ich sehe keinen Grund, daran zu glauben, habe aber auf der anderen Seite keine Möglichkeit, sie als falsch zu beweisen.“

Thomas Henry Huxley

Brief an Charles Kingsley, 23. September 1860
Original engl.: "I neither deny nor affirm the immortality of man. I see no reason for believing in it, but, on the other hand, I have no means of disproving it."

„Meine Aufgabe ist es, meine Hoffnungen zu lehren, sich den Tatsachen anzupassen, und nicht, die Tatsachen dazu zu zwingen, mit meinen Hoffnungen übereinzustimmen.“

Thomas Henry Huxley

Brief an Charles Kingsley, 23. September 1860
Original engl.: "My business is to teach my aspirations to conform themselves to fact, not to try and make facts harmonise with my aspirations."

„Die große Tragödie der Wissenschaft - die Erledigung einer wunderschönen Hypothese durch eine häßliche Tatsache.“

Thomas Henry Huxley

Presidential Address at the British Association for 1870, "Biogenesis and Abiogenesis" (Collected Essays, vol. 8)
Original engl.: "The great tragedy of Science - the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact."

Thomas Henry Huxley: Zitate auf Englisch

“A great chapter of the history of the world is written in the chalk. Few passages in the history of man can be supported by such an overwhelming mass of direct and indirect evidence as that which testifies to the truth of the fragment of the history of the globe, which I hope to enable you to read, with your own eyes, tonight.
Let me add, that few chapters of human history have a more profound significance for ourselves. I weigh my words well when I assert, that the man who should know the true history of the bit of chalk which every carpenter carries about in his breeches-pocket, though ignorant of all other history, is likely, if he will think his knowledge out to its ultimate results, to have a truer, and therefore a better, conception of this wonderful universe, and of man’s relation to it, than the most learned student who is deep-read in the records of humanity and ignorant of those of Nature.”

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Thomas Henry Huxley

1860s, On a Piece of Chalk (1868)

“Every living creature commences its existence under a form different from, and simpler than, that which it eventually attains.”

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Thomas Henry Huxley

Quelle: 1860s, Evidence as to Man's Place in Nature (1863), Ch.2, p. 74

“Missionaries, whether of philosophy or of religion, rarely make rapid way, unless their preachings fall in with the prepossessions of the multitude of shallow thinkers, or can be made to serve as a stalking-horse for the promotion of the practical aims of the still larger multitude, who do not profess to think much, but are quite certain they want a great deal.”

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Thomas Henry Huxley

1890s

“The primary purpose of a liberal education is to make one's mind a pleasant place in which to spend one's time.”

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Thomas Henry Huxley

Sydney J. Harris, as quoted in The Routledge Dictionary of Quotations (1989) by Robert Andrews; also quoted as: "...a pleasant place in which to spend one's leisure."
Misattributed

“Life cannot exist without a certain conformity to the surrounding universe — that conformity involves a certain amount of happiness in excess of pain. In short, as we live we are paid for living.”

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Thomas Henry Huxley

1860s, Reply to Charles Kingsley (1860)

“Sound knowledge respecting the habits and mode of life of the man-like Apes has been even more difficult of attainment than correct information regarding their structure.”

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Thomas Henry Huxley

Quelle: 1860s, Evidence as to Man's Place in Nature (1863), Ch.1, p. 36

“Mr. Darwin's hypothesis is not, so far as I am aware, inconsistent with any known biological fact; on the contrary, if admitted, the facts of Development, of Comparative Anatomy, of Geographical Distribution, and of Palaeontology, become connected together, and exhibit a meaning such as they never possessed before; and I, for one, am fully convinced that if not precisely true, that hypothesis is as near an approximation to the truth as, for example, the Copernican hypothesis was to the true theory of the planetary motions.”

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Thomas Henry Huxley

Quelle: 1860s, Evidence as to Man's Place in Nature (1863), Ch.2, p. 127

“That mysterious independent variable of political calculation, Public Opinion.”

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Thomas Henry Huxley

"Universities, Actual and Ideal" (1874) http://aleph0.clarku.edu/huxley/CE3/U-Ac-I.html
1870s

“Is Man so different from any of these Apes that he must form an order by himself? Or does he differ less from them than they differ from one another, and hence must take his place in the same order with them?”

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Thomas Henry Huxley

Quelle: 1860s, Evidence as to Man's Place in Nature (1863), Ch.2, p. 86

“Most of us, shrinking from the difficulties and dangers which beset the seeker after original answers to these riddles, are contented to ignore them altogether, or to smother the investigating spirit under the featherbed of respected and respectable tradition. But, in every age, one or two restless spirits, blessed with that constructive genius, which can only build on a secure foundation, or cursed with the mere spirit of scepticism, are unable to follow in the well-worn and comfortable track of their forefathers and contemporaries, and unmindful of thorns and stumbling-blocks, strike out into paths of their own.”

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Thomas Henry Huxley

Quelle: 1860s, Evidence as to Man's Place in Nature (1863), Ch.2, p. 71

“Whatever part of the animal fabric—whatever series of muscles, whatever viscera might be selected for comparison—the result would be the same—the lower Apes and the Gorilla would differ more than the Gorilla and the Man.”

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Thomas Henry Huxley

Quelle: 1860s, Evidence as to Man's Place in Nature (1863), Ch.2, p. 101

“To a person uninstructed in natural history, his country or sea-side stroll is a walk through a gallery filled with wonderful works of art, nine-tenths of which have their faces turned to the wall.”

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Thomas Henry Huxley

"On the Educational Value of the Natural History Sciences" (1854) p. 29 http://books.google.com/books?id=FJZWAAAAcAAJ&pg=PA29
1850s

“It cannot be doubted, I think, that Mr. Darwin has satisfactorily proved that what he terms selection, or selective modification, must occur, and does occur, in nature; and he has also proved to superfluity that such selection is competent to produce forms as distinct, structurally, as some genera even are. If the animated world presented us with none but structural differences, I should have no hesitation in saying that Mr. Darwin has demonstrated the existence of a true physical cause, amply competent to account for the origin of living species, and of man among the rest.”

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Thomas Henry Huxley

Quelle: 1860s, Evidence as to Man's Place in Nature (1863), Ch.2, p. 126

“The sceptics end in the infidelity which asserts the problem to be insoluble, or in the atheism which denies the existence of any orderly progress and governance of things: the men of genius propound solutions which grow into systems of Theology or of Philosophy, or veiled in musical language which suggests more than it asserts, take the shape of the Poetry of an epoch.”

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Thomas Henry Huxley

Quelle: 1860s, Evidence as to Man's Place in Nature (1863), Ch.2, p. 72

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

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Thomas Henry Huxley

"Our Knowledge of the Causes of the Phenomena of Organic Nature" (1863) http://aleph0.clarku.edu/huxley/CE2/Phen.html
1860s

“The absolute justice of the system of things is as clear to me as any scientific fact. The gravitation of sin to sorrow is as certain as that of the earth to the sun, and more so–for experimental proof of the fact is within reach of us all–nay, is before us all in our own lives, if we had but the eyes to see it.”

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Thomas Henry Huxley

1860s, Reply to Charles Kingsley (1860)

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

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Thomas Henry Huxley

1870s, On the Hypothesis that Animals are Automata, and Its History (1874)

“So far from the posterior lobe, the posterior cornu, and the hippocampus minor, being structures peculiar to and characteristic of man, as they have been over and over again asserted to be, even after the publication of the clearest demonstration of the reverse, it is precisely these structures which are the most marked cerebral characters common to man with the apes. They are among the most distinctly Simian peculiarities which the human organism exhibits.”

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Thomas Henry Huxley

Quelle: 1860s, Evidence as to Man's Place in Nature (1863), Ch.2, p. 119

“There is but one hypothesis regarding the origin of species of animals in general which has any scientific existence—that propounded by Mr. Darwin.”

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Thomas Henry Huxley

Quelle: 1860s, Evidence as to Man's Place in Nature (1863), Ch.2, p. 125

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

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Thomas Henry Huxley

"On the Physical Basis of Life" (1868) http://aleph0.clarku.edu/huxley/CE1/PhysB.html
1860s

“Even in the important matter of cranial capacity, Men differ more widely from one another than they do from the Apes; while the lowest Apes differ as much, in proportion, from the highest, as the latter does from Man.”

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Thomas Henry Huxley

Quelle: 1860s, Evidence as to Man's Place in Nature (1863), Ch.2, p. 95

“What is this wide-spread component of the surface of the earth? and whence did it come?
You may think this no very hopeful inquiry. You may not unnaturally suppose that the attempt to solve such problems as these can lead to no result, save that of entangling the inquirer in vague speculations, incapable of refutation and of verification.
If such were really the case, I should have selected some other subject than a "piece of chalk" for my discourse. But, in truth, after much deliberation, I have been unable to think of any topic which would so well enable me to lead you to see how solid is the foundation upon which some of the most startling conclusions of physical science rest.”

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Thomas Henry Huxley

1860s, On a Piece of Chalk (1868)

“The greater part of the substance of the following Essays has already been published in the form of Oral Discourses, addressed to widely different audiences, during the past three years. Upon the subject of the second Essay, I delivered six Lectures to the Working Men in 1860, and two, to the members of the Philosophical Institution of Edinburgh in 1862.”

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Thomas Henry Huxley

Advertisement to the Reader, p. 7
1860s, Evidence as to Man's Place in Nature (1863)

“My reflection when I first made myself master of the central idea of the Origin was, "How extremely stupid of me not to have thought of that."”

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Thomas Henry Huxley

Another version of this quotation, omitting the "of me" phrase, appears in Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley F.R.S (1900) edited by Leonard Huxley, p. 170
1880s, On the Reception of the Origin of Species (1887)

“So far from a gradual progress towards perfection forming any necessary part of the Darwinian creed, it appears to us that it is perfectly consistent with indefinite persistence in one state, or with a gradual retrogression.”

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Thomas Henry Huxley

1860s, Criticisms on "The Origin of the Species" (1864)

“So far as cerebral structure goes… it is clear that Man differs less from the Chimpanzee or the Orang, than these do even from the Monkeys, and that the difference between the brains of the Chimpanzee and of Man is almost insignificant, when compared with that between the Chimpanzee brain and that of a Lemur.”

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Thomas Henry Huxley

Quelle: 1860s, Evidence as to Man's Place in Nature (1863), Ch.2, p. 120

“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.”

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Thomas Henry Huxley

"Technical Education" (1877) http://aleph0.clarku.edu/huxley/CE3/TechEd.html
1870s

“We know, that, in the individual man, consciousness grows from a dim glimmer to its full light, whether we consider the infant advancing in years, or the adult emerging from slumber and swoon. We know, further, that the lower animals possess, though less developed, that part of the brain which we have every reason to believe to be the organ of consciousness in man; and as, in other cases, function and organ are proportional, so we have a right to conclude it is with the brain; and that the brutes, though they may not possess our intensity of consciousness, and though, from the absence of language, they can have no trains of thoughts, but only trains of feelings, yet have a consciousness which, more or less distinctly, foreshadows our own. I confess that, in view of the struggle for existence which goes on in the animal world, and of the frightful quantity of pain with which it must be accompanied, I should be glad if the probabilities were in favour of Descartes' hypothesis; but, on the other hand, considering the terrible practical consequences to domestic animals which might ensue from any error on our part, it is as well to err on the right side, if we err at all, and deal with them as weaker brethren, who are bound, like the rest of us, to pay their toll for living, and suffer what is needful for the general good.”

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Thomas Henry Huxley

1870s, On the Hypothesis that Animals are Automata, and Its History (1874)

“I have never had the least sympathy with the a priori reasons against orthodoxy, and I have by nature and disposition the greatest possible antipathy to all the atheistic and infidel school. Nevertheless I know that I am, in spite of myself, exactly what the Christian would call, and, so far as I can see, is justified in calling, atheist and infidel.”

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Thomas Henry Huxley

Letter to Charles Kingsley (6 May 1863)
1860s

“History warns us, however, that it is the customary fate of new truths to begin as heresies and to end as superstitions; and, as matters now stand, it is hardly rash to anticipate that, in another twenty years, the new generation, educated under the influences of the present day, will be in danger of accepting the main doctrines of the 'Origin of Species' with as little reflection, and it may be with as little justification, as so many of our contemporaries, twenty years ago, rejected them. Against any such a consummation let us all devoutly pray; for the scientific spirit is of more value than its products, and irrationally held truths may be more harmful than reasoned errors.”

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Thomas Henry Huxley

"The Coming of Age of The Origin of Species" (1880) http://aleph0.clarku.edu/huxley/CE2/CaOS.html; Collected Essays, vol. 2
1880s

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