A biography for Thomas Huxleyhasn’t been written yet.
“Of moral purpose I see no trace in Nature. That is an article of exclusively human manufacture and very much to our credit.”
“Nothing can be more incorrect than the assumption one sometimes meets with, that physics has one method, chemistry another, and biology a third.”
“The more rapidly truth is spread among mankind the better it will be for them. Only let us be sure that it is the truth.”
“Try to learn something about everything and everything about something.”
“The man of science has learned to believe in justification, not by faith, but by verification.”
“Every great advance in natural knowledge has involved the absolute rejection of authority.”
“Misery is a match that never goes out.”
“It is one of the most saddening things in life that, try as we may, we can never be certain of making people happy, whereas we can almost always be certain of making them unhappy.”
“No delusion is greater than the notion that method and industry can make up for lack of mother-wit, either in science or in practical life.”
“I took thought, and invented what I conceived to be the appropriate title of 'agnostic'.”
“The great tragedy of science - the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact.”
“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.”
“I protest that if some great Power would agree to make me always think what is true and do what is right, on condition of being turned into a sort of clock and would up every morning before I got out of bed, I should instantly close with the offer.”
“The medieval university looked backwards; it professed to be a storehouse of old knowledge. The modern university looks forward, and is a factory of new knowledge.”