Quote by Thomas Henry Huxley

Extinguished theologians lie about the cradle of every science as the strangled snakes beside that of Hercules.


Extinguished theologians lie about the cradle of every scien

Summary

This quote by philosopher and mathematician Arthur Schopenhauer suggests that outdated religious beliefs and theologians hinder the progress of scientific advancements just as a lifeless snake lies next to the mythical cradle of Hercules. It implies that certain religious doctrines and figures inhibit the growth and development of scientific knowledge, using the metaphor to convey the stifling effect that theology can have on scientific exploration.

Topics

Science
By Thomas Henry Huxley
Liked the quote? Share it with your friends.

Random Quotations

Some of you, we all know, are poor, find it hard to live, are sometimes, as it were, gasping for breath. I have no doubt that some of you who read this book are unable to pay for all the dinners which you have actually eaten, or for the coats and shoes which are fast wearing or are already worn out, and have come to this page to spend borrowed or stolen time, robbing your creditors of an hour. It is very evident what mean and sneaking lives many of you live, for my sight has been whetted by experience; always on the limits, trying to get into business and trying to get out of debt, a very ancient slough, called by the Latins aes alienum, another's brass, for some of their coins were made of brass; still living, and dying, and buried by this other's brass; always promising to pay, promising to pay, tomorrow, and dying today, insolvent; seeking to curry favor, to get custom, by how many modes, only not state-prison offences; lying, flattering, voting, contracting yourselves into a nutshell of civility or dilating into an atmosphere of thin and vaporous generosity, that you may persuade your neighbor to let you make his shoes, or his hat, or his coat, or his carriage, or import his groceries for him; making yourselves sick, that you may lay up something against a sick day, something to be tucked away in an old chest, or in a stocking behind the plastering, or, more safely, in the brick bank; no matter where, no matter how much or how little.

Henry David Thoreau