87 Quotes by John B. S. Haldane

You can analyze a glass of water and you’re left with a lot of chemical components, but nothing you can drink.

This is my prediction for the future: Whatever hasn’t happened will happen, and no one will be safe from it.

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

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.”

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.

It was a reaction from the old idea of “protoplasm”, a name which was a mere repository of ignorance.