Thomas Huxley Quotes

I think that we scientists are seeking an understanding of the natural world. We come in various types - chemists and physicists and biologists and such - and we all have the same goal. We are making progress.

I profess both to learn and to teach anatomy, not from books but from dissections; not from positions of philosophers but from the fabric of nature.

Ann Sjoerdsma has successfully blended the fascinating story of her illustrious father's scientific achievements [in wide-ranging] drug research, with an enjoyable historic account of the astounding progress of biomedical science during the second half of the 20th century.

The human body is something that I truly love, above all else.

Taken as a story of human achievement, and human blindness, the discoveries in the sciences are among the great epics.

The greatest achievements in the science of this [twentieth] century are themselves the sources of more puzzlement than human beings have ever experienced. Indeed, it is likely that the twentieth century will be looked back at as the time when science provided the first close glimpse of the profundity of human ignorance. We have not reached solutions; we have only begun to discover how to ask questions.

There is no royal road to science, and only those who do not dread the fatiguing climb of its steep paths have a chance of gaining its luminous summits. (Preface to the French edition).

The Nobel Prize is fine, but the drugs I've developed are rewards in themselves.

I have faith that science is a good thing. Seriously, I'd say that I am very much in awe of nature. In fact, I think to some extent, "awe" was a word that was almost invented for scientists.

It was getting the results that made science worth doing; the accolades were a thin, secondary pleasure.

As long as scientists are free to pursue the truth wherever it may lead, there will be a flow of new scientific knowledge to those who can apply it to practical problems.

Has science ever retreated? No! It is Catholicism which has always retreated before her, and will always be forced to retreat.

The stumbling way in which even the ablest of the scientists in every generation have had to fight through thickets of erroneous observations, misleading generalizations, inadequate formulation, and unconscious prejudice is rarely appreciated by those who obtain their scientific knowledge from textbooks.

Without science, there would be no such hope.

How far would people get in physics if discovery was described as disgusting - "Your formula is disgusting and filthy"? Not very far.

We must also teach science not as the bare body of fact, but more as human endeavor in its historic context-in the context of the effects of scientific thought on every kind of thought. We must teach it as an intellectual pursuit rather than as a body of tricks.

The science hangs like a gathering fog in a valley, a fog which begins nowhere and goes nowhere, an incidental, unmeaning inconvenience to passers-by.

Most man only care for science so far as they get a living by it, and that they worship even error when it affords them a subsistence.

The human body is the most complex system ever created. The more we learn about it, the more appreciation we have about what a rich system it is.

Those who draw their sustenance from science are blessed. It is for me to only derive an occasional pleasure. This is nothing worthy of conceit, but I am indeed touched by the joys. This book is an ode to such joys, a digest of my collections from various sources.

Animal experimentation has been essential to the development of all cardiac surgery, transplantation surgery, joint replacements and all vaccinations.

The history of science, like the history of all human ideas, is a history of irresponsible dreams, of obstinacy, and of error.

God is an ever receding pocket of scientific ignorance.

The most heated defenders of a science, who cannot endure the slightest sneer at it, are commonly those who have not made very much progress in it and are secretly aware of this defect.