Quote

I have no doubt that in reality the future will be vastly more surprising than anything I can imagine. Now my own suspicion is that the Universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose.

John B. S. Haldane

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

John B. S. Haldane
Age: 72 †
Born: 1892
Born: November 5
Died: 1964
Died: December 1
Biochemist
Biologist
Geneticist
Physiologist
Scientist
University Teacher
Hartford
Connecticut
J. B. S. Haldane
John Burdon Sanderson Haldane
Universe
Environmental
Language
Limits
Reality
Ignorance
Anything
Doubt
Imagine
Vastly
Knowledge
Suspicion
Future
Surprising
Religion
Suppose

More quotes by John B. S. Haldane

Image
Blake expressed some doubt as to whether God had made the tiger. But the tiger is in many ways an admirable animal. We have now to ask whether God made the tapeworm. And it is questionable whether an affirmative answer fits in either with what we know about the process of evolution or what many of us believe about the moral perfection of God.
John B. S. Haldane
Image
Haldane was engaged in discussion with an eminent theologian. What inference, asked the latter, might one draw about the nature of God from a study of his works? Haldane replied: An inordinate fondness for beetles.
John B. S. Haldane
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
Science affects the average man and woman in two ways already. He or she benefits by its application driving a motor-car or omnibus instead of a horse-drawn vehicle, being treated for disease by a doctor or surgeon rather than a witch, and being killed with an automatic pistol or shell in place of a dagger or a battle-axe.
John B. S. Haldane
Image
I am quite sure that our views on evolution would be very different had biologists studied genetics and natural selection before and not after most of them were convinced that evolution had occurred.
John B. S. Haldane
Image
We must learn not to take traditional morals too seriously. And it is just because even the least dogmatic of religions tends to associate itself with some kind of unalterable moral tradition, that there can be no truce between science and religion.
John B. S. Haldane
Image
I think, however, that so long as our present economic and national systems continue, scientific research has little to fear.
John B. S. Haldane
Image
There is no great invention, from fire to flying, which has not been hailed as an insult to some god.
John B. S. Haldane
Image
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
Image
I will give up my belief in evolution if someone finds a fossil rabbit in the Precambrian.
John B. S. Haldane
Image
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
Image
If one could conclude as to the nature of the Creator from a study of creation it would appear that God has an inordinate fondness for stars and beetles.
John B. S. Haldane
Image
We do not know, in most cases, how far social failure and success are due to heredity, and how far to environment. But environment is the easier of the two to improve.
John B. S. Haldane
Image
I do not believe in the commercial possibility of induced radioactivity.
John B. S. Haldane
Image
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
Image
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
Image
Man armed with science is like a baby with a box of matches.
John B. S. Haldane
Image
Science is vastly more stimulating to the imagination than the classics.
John B. S. Haldane