JOHN BURDON SANDERSON HALDANE

There can be no truce between science and religion.

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.

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

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

I wish I had the voice of Homer to sing of rectal carcinoma.

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.

And if we must educate our poets and artists in science, we must educate our masters, labour and capital, in art.

While I do not suggest that humanity will ever be able to dispense with its martyrs, I cannot avoid the suspicion that with a little more thought and a little less belief their number may be substantially reduced.

If one could conclude as to the nature of the Creator from a study of his creation it would appear that God has a special fondness for stars and beetles.

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.

The extreme socialists desire to run every nation as a single business concern.

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

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.

My own suspicion is that the universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose.

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.

It is my supposition that the Universe in not only queerer than we imagine, is queerer than we can imagine.

A fairly bright boy is far more intelligent and far better company than the average adult.

Capitalism did not arise because capitalists stole the land and the workmen's tools, but because it was more efficient than feudalism. It will perish because it is not merely less efficient than socialism, but actually self-destructive.

My practice as a scientist is atheistic. That is to say, when I set up an experiment I assume that no god, angel, or devil is going to interfere with its course; and this assumption has been justified by such success as I have achieved in my professional career. I should therefore be intellectually dishonest if I were not also atheistic in the affairs of the world.

An ounce of algebra is worth of a ton of verbal argument.

To the biologist the problem of socialism appears largely as a problem of size. The extreme socialists desire to run every nation as a single business concern. I do not suppose that Henry Ford would find much difficulty in running Andorra or Luxembourg on a socialistic basis. He has already more men on his pay-roll than their population. It is conceivable that a syndicate of Fords, if we could find them, would make Belgium Ltd. or Denmark Inc. pay their way. But while nationalization of certain industries is an obvious possibility in the largest of states, I find it no easier to picture a completely socialized British Empire or United States than an elephant turning somersaults or a hippopotamus jumping a hedge.

To the biologist the problem of socialism appears largely as a problem of size.

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

The future will be no primrose path. It will have its own problems. Some will be the secular problems of the past, giant flowers of evil blossoming at last to their own destruction. Others will be wholly new.

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.