J.B.S. Haldane

1892–1964 · Geneticist and evolutionary biologist

Topics: biology, learning, creativity, science

• Where natural selection slackens, new forms may arise which would not survive under more rigid competition

  — J.B.S. Haldane

• There is no great invention, from fire to flying, which has not been hailed as an insult to some god.

  — J.B.S. Haldane

• 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.

  — J.B.S. Haldane

• Now, my own suspicion is that the universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose

  — J.B.S. Haldane

• 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.

  — J.B.S. Haldane

• Comparative parasitology supports the evolutionary hypothesis. If two animals have a common ancestor, their parasites are likely to be descended from those of the ancestor. This principle has been applied with considerable effect to the classification of frogs and other groups.

  — J.B.S. Haldane

• 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 killed, a horse splashes.

  — J.B.S. Haldane

• If much of the investigation here summarised has only proved the obvious, the obvious is worth proving when this can be done. And if the relative importance of selection and mutation is obvious, it has certainly not always been recognised as such.

  — J.B.S. Haldane