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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

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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
Draws
Inference
God
Fondness
Asked
Theologian
Works
Replied
Study
Discussion
Nature
Latter
Inordinate
Might
Engaged
Beetles
Draw
Eminent

More quotes by John B. S. Haldane

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Shelley and Keats were the last English poets who were at all up to date in their chemical knowledge.
John B. S. Haldane
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A time will however come (as I believe) when physiology will invade and destroy mathematical physics, as the latter has destroyed geometry.
John B. S. Haldane
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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Christianity is haunted by the theory of a God with a craving for bloody sacrifices.
John B. S. Haldane
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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
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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
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Reality is the cage of those who lack imagination.
John B. S. Haldane
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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
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It was a reaction from the old idea of protoplasm, a name which was a mere repository of ignorance.
John B. S. Haldane
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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
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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
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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
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Man armed with science is like a baby with a box of matches.
John B. S. Haldane
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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
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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
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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