John B. S. Haldane Quotes

I think, however, that so long as our present economic and national systems continue, scientific research has little to fear.

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.

So many new ideas are at first strange and horrible though ultimately valuable that a very heavy responsibility rests upon those who would prevent their dissemination.

Would I lay down my life to save my brother? No, but I would to save two brothers or eight cousins.

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.

It seems to me immensely unlikely that mind is a mere by-product of matter. For if my mental processes are determined wholly by the motions of atoms in my brain I have no reason to suppose that my beliefs are true. They may be sound chemically, but that does not make them sound logically. And hence I have no reason for supposing my brain to be composed of atoms.

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.

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.

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.

Teleology is like a mistress to a biologist: he cannot live without her but he's unwilling to be seen with her in public.

There are 400,000 species of beetles on this planet, but only 8,000 species of mammals.

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.

Science is vastly more stimulating to the imagination than the classics.

Religion is still parasitic in the interstices of our knowledge which have not yet been filled. Like bed-bugs in the cracks of walls and furniture, miracles lurk in the lacunae of science. The scientist plasters up these cracks in our knowledge; the more militant Rationalist swats the bugs in the open. Both have their proper sphere and they should realize that they are allies.

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.

A time will however come (as I believe) when physiology will invade and destroy mathematical physics, as the latter has destroyed geometry.