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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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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
Matches
Armed
Boxes
Baby
Science
Men
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More quotes by 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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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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Reality is the cage of those who lack imagination.
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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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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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
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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 will give up my belief in evolution if someone finds a fossil rabbit in the Precambrian.
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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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
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An ounce of algebra is worth a ton of verbal argument.
John B. S. Haldane
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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
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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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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
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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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I think, however, that so long as our present economic and national systems continue, scientific research has little to fear.
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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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
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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