Julian Huxley Quotes

God is one among several hypotheses to account for the phenomena of human destiny, and it is now proving to be an inadequate hypothesis. To a great many people, including myself, this realization is a great relief, both intellectually and morally. It frees us to explore the real phenomena for which the God hypothesis seeks to account, to define them more accurately, and to work for a more satisfying set of concepts. ~ Julian Huxley

By speech first, but far more by writing, man has been able to put something of himself beyond death. In tradition and in books an integral part of the individual persists, for it can influence the minds and actions of other people in different places and at different times: a row of black marks on a page can move a man to tears, though the bones of him that wrote it are long ago crumbled to dust. In truth, the whole progress of civilization is based upon this power. ~ Julian Huxley

I recall the story of the philosopher and the theologian... The two were engaged in disputation and the theologian used the old quip about a philosopher resembling a blind man, in a dark room, looking for a black cat - which wasn't there. 'That may be,' said the philosopher, 'but a theologian would have found it. ~ Julian Huxley

JULIAN HUXLEY'S "EUGENICS MANIFESTO":
"Eugenics Manifesto" was the name given to an article supporting eugenics. The document, which appeared in Nature, September 16, 1939, was a joint statement issued by America's and Britain's most prominent biologists, and was widely referred to as the "Eugenics Manifesto." The manifesto was a response to a request from Science Service, of Washington, D.C. for a reply to the question "How could the world's population be improved most effectively genetically?" Two of the main signatories and authors were Hermann J. Muller and Julian Huxley. Julian Huxley, as this book documents, was the founding director of UNESCO from the famous Huxley family. Muller was an American geneticist, educator and Nobel laureate best known for his work on the physiological and genetic effects of radiation. Put into the context of the timeline, this document was published 15 years after "Mein Kampf" and a year after the highly publicized violence of Kristallnacht. In other words, there is no way either Muller or Huxley were unaware at the moment of publication of the historical implications of eugenic agendas. ~ A.E. Samaan

Applied physics and chemistry bring more grist to the mill; applied biology will also be capable of changing the mill itself. ~ Julian Huxley

The zestful but scientific exploration of possibilities and of the techniques for realizing them will make our hopes rational, and will set our ideals within the framework of reality, by showing how much of them are indeed realizable. ~ Julian Huxley

Words are tools which automatically carve concepts out of experience. ~ Julian Huxley

Dr. Julian Huxley, famous English biologist and director of UNESCO, recently stated that Western scientists should "learn the Oriental techniques" for entering the trance state and for control of breathing. "What happens? How is it possible?" he said. An Associated Press dispatch from London, dated Aug. 21, 1948, reported: "Dr. Huxley told the new World Federation for Mental Health it might well look into the mystic lore of the East. If this lore could be investigated scientifically, he advised mental specialists, 'then I think an immense step forward could be made in your field. ~ Paramahansa Yogananda

Evolution is nothing but matter become conscious of itself. ~ Julian Huxley

It is essential for evolution to become the central core of any educational system, because it is evolution, in the broad sense, that links inorganic nature with life, and the stars with the earth, and matter with mind, and animals with man. Human history is a continuation of biological evolution in a different form. ~ Julian Huxley

By death the moon was gathered in Long ago, ah long ago;
Yet still the silver corpse must spin
And with another's light must glow.
Her frozen mountains must forget
Their primal hot volcanic breath,
Doomed to revolve for ages yet,
Void amphitheatres of death.
And all about the cosmic sky,
The black that lies beyond our blue,
Dead stars innumerable lie,
And stars of red and angry hue
Not dead but doomed to die. ~ Julian Huxley

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

Today the god hypothesis has ceased to be scientifically tenable ... and its abandonment often brings a deep sense of relief. ~ Julian Huxley

It is curiosity, initiative, originality, and the ruthless application of honesty that count in research- much more than feats of logic and memory alone. ~ Julian Huxley

My main reason for scepticism about the Huxley/Sagan theory is that the human brain is demonstrably eager to see faces in random patterns, as we know from scientific evidence, on top of the numerous legends about faces of Jesus, or the Virgin Mary, or Mother Teresa, being seen on slices of toast, or pizzas, or patches of damp on a wall. This eagerness is enhanced if the pattern departs from randomness in the specific direction of being symmetrical. ~ Richard Dawkins

If I am to be remembered, I hope it will not be primarily for my specialized scientific work, but as a generalist; one to whom, enlarging Terence's words, nothing human and nothing in external nature was alien. ~ Julian Huxley

Evolution: The Modern Synthesis. ~ Julian Huxley

I believe in transhumanism: once there are enough people who can truly say that, the human species will be on the threshold of a new kind of existence, as different from ours as ours is from that of Peking man. It will at last be consciously fulfilling its real destiny. ~ Julian Huxley

Darwinism removed the whole idea of God as the creator from the sphere of rational discussion. ~ Julian Huxley

As I see it the world is undoubtedly in need of a new religion, and that religion must be founded on humanist principles. When I say religion, I do not mean merely a theology involving belief in a supernatural god or gods; nor do I mean merely a system of ethics, however exalted; nor only scientific knowledge, however extensive; nor just a practical social morality, however admirable or efficient. I mean an organized system of ideas and emotions which relate man to his destiny, beyond and above the practical affairs of every day, transcending the present and the existing systems of law and social structure. The prerequisite today is that any such religion shall appeal potentially to all mankind; and that its intellectual and rational sides shall not be incompatible with scientific knowledge but on the contrary based on it. ~ Julian Huxley

The lowest strata are reproducing too fast. Therefore ... they must not have too easy access to relief or hospital treatment lest the removal of the last check on natural selection should make it too easy for children to be produced or to survive; long unemployment should be a ground for sterilisation. ~ Julian Huxley

Sooner or later, false thinking brings wrong conduct. ~ Julian Huxley

Isn't there something in living dangerously? ~ Aldous Huxley

Till at last the child's mind is these suggestions, and the sum of the suggestions is the child's mind. And not the child's mind only. The adult's mind too–all his life long. The mind that judges and desires and decides–made up of these suggestions. But all these suggestions are OUR suggestions!" The Director almost shouted in his triumph. "Suggestions from the State. ~ Aldous Huxley

He loved us personally ... centuries before we were born. ~ Peter Julian Eymard

Mary adored Jesus as the Bridegroom of souls. Union is the final purpose of love. Jesus by the gift of His substance in the Eucharist unites Himself with our souls as with His dear spouses. As a Bridegroom, He gives them all His possessions, His name, His heart, His whole Self, but on the condition that the soul reciprocates. The soul, His spouse, shall live for Him only ~ Peter Julian Eymard

To know a person's character you must at least have talked with him, and unless you are gifted with remarkable intuitive insight you are not likely to know much about him unless you have seen him living and acting over a considerable period of time. ~ Aldous Huxley

But truth's a menace, science is a public danger. As ~ Aldous Huxley

We can only know in the nervous system what we have known in behavior first. ~ Julian Jaynes

First love fixes a life for ever: this much I have discovered over the years. It may not outrank subsequent loves, but they will always be affected by its existence. ~ Julian Barnes

How extremely stupid not to have thought of that ~ Thomas Henry Huxley

Until you have wasted time in a city, you cannot pretend to know it well. ~ Julian Green

I know I found his lips and let him caress me without realizing that I, too, was crying and didn't know why. That dawn, and all the ones that followed in the two weeks I spent with Julian, we made love to one another on the floor, never saying a word. Later, sitting in a cafe or strolling through the streets, I would look into his eyes and know, without any need to question him, that he still loved Penelope. I remember that during those days I learned to hate that seventeen-year-old girl (for Penelope was always seventeen to me) whom I had never met and who now haunted my dreams. I invented excuses for cabling Cabestany to prolong my stay. I no longer cared whether I lost my job or the grey existence I had left behind in Barcelona. I have often asked myself whether my life was so empty when I arrived in Paris that I fell into Julian's arms - like Irene Marceau's girls, who, despite themselves, craved for affection. ~ Carlos Ruiz Zafon

After a long moment, the Countess sat back down. "So," she said. "You ... do love her. I must say, you look peculiarly resigned to it."
He shrugged. "It is not fresh news for me."
"And for Emma?"
"Neither welcomed nor openly acknowledged."
"But acknowledged all the same, you believe."
"Perhaps," he said. "I cannot know. Not anymore."
-Delphinia, Lady Chad and Julian ~ Meredith Duran

Hug me till you drug me, honey;
Kiss me till I'm in a coma. ~ Aldous Huxley

Never having thought of writing for the guitar, I asked Julian Bream for a chart which would explain what the guitar could do. I managed to write some rather pretty pieces for him, except that the first six notes of the first piece all need to be played on open strings. So when he begins to play the audience will probably think he's tuning the bloody thing up! ~ William Walton

You might even ask me to apply my 'theory' to myself and explain what damage I had suffered a long way back and what its consequences might be: for instance, how it might affect my reliability and truthfulness. I'm not sure I could answer this, to be honest. ~ Julian Barnes

I look upon cancer in the same way that I look upon heart disease, arthritis, high blood pressure, or even obesity, for that matter, in that by dramatically strengthening the body's immune system through diet, nutritional supplements, and exercise, the body can rid itself of the cancer, just as it does in other degenerative diseases. Consequently, I wouldn't have chemotherapy and radiation because I'm not interested in therapies that cripple the immune system, and, in my opinion, virtually ensure failure for the majority of cancer patients. ~ Julian Whitaker

It's quite an interesting time, the '20s, because the politics of England were changing quite a lot, and the class structure was starting to shift a little. ~ Julian Ovenden

Writers of either gender ought to be able to do the opposite sex-that's one basic test of competence, after all. ~ Julian Barnes

[Flaubert] didn't just hate the railway as such; he hated the way it flattered people with the illusion of progress. What was the point of scientific advance without moral advance? The railway would merely permit more people to move about, meet and be stupid together. ~ Julian Barnes

Hopefully, in not a too distant future, we will see a Latino president, and who knows how's that going to happen. It's just a matter of time. ~ Julian Castro

A pity, he thought, as he signed his name. It was a masterly piece of work. But once you began admitting explanations in terms of purpose-well, you didn't know what the result might be. It was the sort of idea that might easily decondition the more unsettled minds among the higher castes-make them lose their faith in happiness as the Sovereign Good and take to believing, instead, that the goal was somewhere beyond, somewhere outside the present human sphere, that the purpose of life was not the maintenance of well-being, but some intensification and refining of consciousness, some enlargement of knowledge. Which was, the Controller reflected, quite possibly true. But not, in the present circumstance, admissible. He picked up his pen again, and under the words "Not to be published" drew a second line, thicker and blacker than the first; then sighed, "What fun it would be," he thought, "if one didn't have to think about happiness! ~ Aldous Huxley

Flaubert believed that it was impossible to explain one art form in terms of another, and that great paintings required no words of explanation. Braque thought the ideal state would be reached when we said nothing at all in front of a painting. But we are very far from reaching that state. We remain incorrigibly verbal creatures who love to explain things, to form opinions, to argue. Put us in front of a picture and we chatter, each in our different way. Proust, when going round an art gallery, liked to comment on who the people in the pictures reminded him of in real life; which might have been a deft way of avoiding the direct aesethetic confrontation. But it is a rare picture that stuns, or argues, us into silence. And if one does, it is only a short time before we want to explain and understand the very silence into which we have been plunged. ~ Julian Barnes

Grace is the first mouthful of each course - chewed and chewed until there's nothing left of it. And all the time you're chewing you pay attention to the flavour of the food, to it's consistency and temperature, to the pressures on your teeth and the feel of the muscles in your jaws. ~ Aldous Huxley

And the two essential and indispensable things are first of all intelligence in the right most sense of that word and goodwill or the old fashion word charity/love, I mean these two things have to go hand in hand. Intelligence and knowledge without charity or goodwill would perhaps be inhuman and goodwill or charity undirected by intelligence or knowledge would be either impotent or misguided, the two have to go together. ~ Aldous Huxley

Honour is not just a matter of internal good feeling, but also of external behaviour. ~ Julian Barnes

People are generally badly advised when they're starting out in the creative field. ~ Julian Lennon

You can take Lucas to watch football when he's older,' she once told me. Ah, the rheumy-eyed grandpa on the terraces inducting the lad into the mysteries of soccer: how to loathe people wearing different coloured shirts, how to feign injury, how to blow your snot on to the pitch – See, son, you press hard on one nostril to close it, and explode the green stuff out of the other. How to be vain and overpaid and have your best years behind you before you've even understood what life's about. Oh yes, I look forward to taking Lucas to the football. ~ Julian Barnes

The students nodded, emphatically agreeing with a statement which upwards of sixty-two thousand repetitions in the dark had made them accept, not merely as true, but as axiomatic, self-evident, utterly indisputable. ~ Aldous Huxley

Lying in bed, he would think of Heaven and London. ~ Aldous Huxley

Everybody strains after happiness, and the result is that nobody's happy. ~ Aldous Huxley

Missionaries, whether of philosophy or religion, rarely make rapid way, unless their preachings fall in with the prepossessions ofthe 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. ~ Thomas Huxley

I feel that Julian Assange came to be both paranoid and self-regarding in ways that ultimately undermined his own mission. And so, the transparency radical became a secret-keeper instead of a secret-leaker. And that, I think, is a big problem. ~ Alex Gibney

The standard of living has risen along with the size of the world's population since the beginning of recorded time. There is no convincing economic reason why these trends toward a better life should not continue indefinitely. ~ Julian Simon

When I was in the navy, I wanted to go to Paris and the Academie Julian. I never did. Mexico City took me instead. ~ Pete Hamill

If instituted, the TPP's IP regime would trample over individual rights and free expression, as well as ride roughshod over the intellectual and creative commons. If you read, write, publish, think, listen, dance, sing or invent; if you farm or consume food; if you're ill now or might one day be ill, the TPP has you in its crosshairs. ~ Julian Assange

I kinda like messing with perception a little bit. Kind of what drugs do sometimes, and drinking. I mean, you know, you mess with your mind a little bit to see life from different angles. Within reason, if you can handle it. ~ Julian Casablancas

Consciousness is always open to many possibilities because it involves play. It is always an adventure. ~ Julian Jaynes

Intellectuals ... regard over-simplification as the original sin of the mind and have no use for the slogans, the unqualified assertions and sweeping generalizations. ~ Aldous Huxley

Gee, thanks Dad. I promise to be a good boy and play nice with the other kids.(Kyrian)
Smart ass.(Julian)
Better than a dumb ass.(Kyrian) ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon

Poetry's packaged as a late-night slot, a quote minority taste unquote, like water-skiing or goat-fucking or something. ~ Julian Barnes

In those days, we imagined ourselves as being kept in some kind of holding pen, waiting to be released into our lives. And when the moment came, our lives
and time itself
would speed up. How were we to know that our lives had in any case begun, that some advantage had already been gained, some damage already inflicted? Also, that our release would only be into a larger holding pen, whose boundaries would be at first undiscernible. ~ Julian Barnes

I'm not interested in doing a simple, straightforward action movie, unless they want to pay me lots of money. ~ Julian Jarrold

Whisky, I find, helps clarity of thought. And reduces pain. It has the additional virtue of making you drunk or, if taken in sufficient quantity, very drunk. ~ Julian Barnes

Perhaps, in the future, when machines have attained to a state of perfection - for I confess that I am, like Godwin and Shelley, a believer in perfectibility, the perfectibility of machinery - then, perhaps, it will be possible for those who, like myself, desire it, to live in a dignified seclusion, surrounded by the delicate attentions of silent and graceful machines, and entirely secure from any human intrusion. ~ Aldous Huxley

This is rock 'n' roll, Mags. It don't understand discreet. - Julian MacAvoy ~ Toni Kenyon

Writers write to influence their readers, their preachers, their auditors, but always, at bottom, to be more themselves. ~ Aldous Huxley

Grace transforms our failings full of dread into abundant, endless comfort ... our failings full of shame into a noble, glorious rising ... our dying full of sorrow into holy, blissful life. ... . Just as our contrariness here on earth brings us pain, shame and sorrow, so grace brings us surpassing comfort, glory, and bliss in heaven ... And that shall be a property of blessed love, that we shall know in God, which we might never have known without first experiencing woe. ~ Julian Of Norwich