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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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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
Someone
Give
Rabbit
Giving
Fossil
Fossils
Rabbits
Finds
Evolution
Belief

More quotes by 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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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I do not believe in the commercial possibility of induced radioactivity.
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 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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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 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
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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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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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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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Science is vastly more stimulating to the imagination than the classics.
John B. S. Haldane
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An ounce of algebra is worth a ton of verbal argument.
John B. S. Haldane