Top 48 J B S Haldane Quotes

#1. I will give up my belief in evolution if someone finds a fossil rabbit in the Precambrian.

John B. S. Haldane

J B S Haldane Quotes #40455
#2. In fact, words are well adapted for description and the arousing of emotion, but for many kinds of precise thought other symbols are much better.

John B. S. Haldane

J B S Haldane Quotes #71851
#3. The Creator, if He exists, has a special preference for beetles.

John B. S. Haldane

J B S Haldane Quotes #77165
#4. The four stages of acceptance:
1. This is worthless nonsense.
2. This is an interesting, but perverse, point of view.
3. This is true, but quite unimportant.
4. I always said so."

(Review of The Truth About Death, in: Journal of Genetics 1963, Vol. 58, p.464)

J.B.S. Haldane

J B S Haldane Quotes #145750
#5. There are 400,000 species of beetles on this planet, but only 8,000 species of mammals.

John B. S. Haldane

J B S Haldane Quotes #232089
#6. An ounce of algebra is worth a ton of verbal argument.

John B. S. Haldane

J B S Haldane Quotes #255462
#7. A fairly bright boy is far more intelligent and far better company than the average adult.

John B. S. Haldane

J B S Haldane Quotes #260967
#8. Einstein - the greatest Jew since Jesus. I have no doubt that Einstein's name will still be remembered and revered when Lloyd George, Foch and William Hohenzollern share with Charlie Chaplin that ineluctable oblivion which awaits the uncreative mind.

John B. S. Haldane

J B S Haldane Quotes #280550
#9. The conclusion forced upon me in the course of a life devoted to natural science is that the universe as it is assumed to be in physical science is only an idealized world, while the real universe is the spiritual universe in which spiritual values count for everything.

John B. S. Haldane

J B S Haldane Quotes #311879
#10. If one could conclude as to the nature of the Creator from a study of his creation it would appear that God has a special fondness for stars and beetles.

John B. S. Haldane

J B S Haldane Quotes #363176
#11. As the biologist J. B. S. Haldane once famously observed: "The universe is not only queerer than we suppose; it is queerer than we can suppose." The

Bill Bryson

J B S Haldane Quotes #377191
#12. Perforated eardrums were quite common16, too; but, as Haldane reassuringly noted in one of his essays, 'the drum generally heals up; and if a hole remains in it, although one is somewhat deaf, one can blow tobacco smoke out of the ear in question, which is a social accomplishment.

Bill Bryson

J B S Haldane Quotes #421952
#13. There is no great invention, from fire to flying, which has not been hailed as an insult to some god.

John B. S. Haldane

J B S Haldane Quotes #451749
#14. Reality is the cage of those who lack imagination.

John B. S. Haldane

J B S Haldane Quotes #453776
#15. As J. B. S. Haldane said when asked what evidence might contradict evolution, 'Fossil rabbits in the Precambrian.

Richard Dawkins

J B S Haldane Quotes #458892
#16. It wasn't until I had performed by first autopsy that I realized that even the drabest human exteriors could contain the most beautiful viscera. After that, I would console myself for the plainness of my fellow bus-riders by dissecting them in my imagination.

John B. S. Haldane

J B S Haldane Quotes #460582
#17. It is my supposition that the Universe in not only queerer than we imagine, is queerer than we can imagine.

John B. S. Haldane

J B S Haldane Quotes #466178
#18. Money can buy a fine dog but it is kindness that makes him wag his tail.

John B. S. Haldane

J B S Haldane Quotes #475449
#19. To the biologist the problem of socialism appears largely as a problem of size.

John B. S. Haldane

J B S Haldane Quotes #495527
#20. When challenged by a zealous Popperian to say how evolution could ever be falsified, J. B. S. Haldane famously growled: 'Fossil rabbits in the Precambrian.

Richard Dawkins

J B S Haldane Quotes #496262
#21. We can fortell little of the future save that the thing that has not been is the thing that shall be.

J.B.S. Haldane

J B S Haldane Quotes #573397
#22. Until politics are a branch of science we shall do well to regard political and social reforms as experiments rather than short-cuts to the millennium.

John B. S. Haldane

J B S Haldane Quotes #605257
#23. So far from being an isolated phenomenon the late war is only an example of the disruptive result that we may constantly expect from the progress of science.

John B. S. Haldane

J B S Haldane Quotes #606204
#24. Every Christian church has tried to impose a code of morals of some kind for which it has claimed divine sanction. As these codes have always been opposed to those of the gospels a loophole has been left for moral progress such as hardly exists in other religions.

John B. S. Haldane

J B S Haldane Quotes #647589
#25. You can drop a mouse down a thousand-yard mine shaft and, on arriving at the bottom, it gets a slight shock and walks away. A rat would probably be killed, though it can fall safely from the eleventh story of a building, a man is broken, a horse splashes.

John B. S. Haldane

J B S Haldane Quotes #663786
#26. It took man 250,000 years to transcend the hunting pack. It will not take him so long to transcend the nation.

J.B.S. Haldane

J B S Haldane Quotes #704161
#27. The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions. These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.

John B. S. Haldane

J B S Haldane Quotes #790203
#28. I wish I had the voice of Homer to sing of rectal carcinoma.

John B. S. Haldane

J B S Haldane Quotes #845020
#29. I have never yet met a healthy person who worried very much about his health, or a really good person who worried much about his own soul.

John B. S. Haldane

J B S Haldane Quotes #872606
#30. Would I lay down my life to save my brother? No, but I would to save two brothers or eight cousins.

John B. S. Haldane

J B S Haldane Quotes #876755
#31. You can analyze a glass of water and you're left with a lot of chemical components, but nothing you can drink.

John B. S. Haldane

J B S Haldane Quotes #981132
#32. The advance of scientific knowledge does not seem to make either our universe or our inner life in it any less mysterious.

John B. S. Haldane

J B S Haldane Quotes #985476
#33. Science is as yet in its infancy, and we can foretell little of the future save that the thing that has not been is the thing that shall be; that no beliefs, no values, no institutions are safe.

John B. S. Haldane

J B S Haldane Quotes #1002828
#34. Capitalism, though it may not always give the scientific worker a living wage, will always protect him, as being one of the geese which produce golden eggs for its table.

John B. S. Haldane

J B S Haldane Quotes #1026882
#35. Teleology is like a mistress to a biologist: he cannot live without her but he's unwilling to be seen with her in public.

John B. S. Haldane

J B S Haldane Quotes #1031147
#36. Man armed with science is like a baby with a box of matches.

John B. S. Haldane

J B S Haldane Quotes #1034735
#37. The great evolutionary biologist J B S Haldane (1892-1964), on being asked by a cleric what biology could say about the Creator, entertainingly replied, 'I'm really not sure, except that the Creator, if he exists, must have an inordinate fondness of beetles.

David Beerling

J B S Haldane Quotes #1062347
#38. My own suspicion is that the universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose.

John B. S. Haldane

J B S Haldane Quotes #1082439
#39. I think, however, that so long as our present economic and national systems continue, scientific research has little to fear.

John B. S. Haldane

J B S Haldane Quotes #1091147
#40. There can be no truce between science and religion.

John B. S. Haldane

J B S Haldane Quotes #1106234
#41. Man's habits change more rapidly than his instincts.

J.B.S. Haldane

J B S Haldane Quotes #1106986
#42. I suppose the process of acceptance will pass through the usual four stages: (i) this is worthless nonsense; (ii) this is an interesting, but perverse, point of view; (iii) this is true, but quite unimportant; (iv) I always said so.

John B. S. Haldane

J B S Haldane Quotes #1109878
#43. While I do not suggest that humanity will ever be able to dispense with its martyrs, I cannot avoid the suspicion that with a little more thought and a little less belief their number may be substantially reduced.

John B. S. Haldane

J B S Haldane Quotes #1115115
#44. The wise man regulates his conduct by the theories both of religion and science. But he regards these theories not as statements of ultimate fact but as art-forms.

John B. S. Haldane

J B S Haldane Quotes #1140432
#45. This is my prediction for the future: Whatever hasn't happened will happen, and no one will be safe from it.

John B. S. Haldane

J B S Haldane Quotes #1162852
#46. I have come to the conclusion that my subjective account of my motivation is largely mythical on almost all occasions. I don't know why I do things.

John B. S. Haldane

J B S Haldane Quotes #1170439
#47. An attempt to study the evolution of living organisms without reference to cytology would be as futile as an account of stellar evolution which ignored spectroscopy.

John B. S. Haldane

J B S Haldane Quotes #1181607
#48. To light a lamp as a source of light is about as wasteful of energy as to burn down ones house to roast one's pork.

J.B.S. Haldane

J B S Haldane Quotes #1670796

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