John Burdon Sanderson Haldane Quotes

Aristocracy is naturally abhorrent to me, and adored equality is my idol.

Actual aristocracy cannot be abolished by any law: all the law can do is decree how it is to be imparted and who is to acquire it.

Americans sometimes say to me that they have no class system themselves. All human beings have class systems. It can be based on a different thing in a different country, but the thing about breeding is, you can't buy it. You can't buy class.

The great families have their privileges.

The surface of American society is covered with a layer of democratic paint, but from time to time one can see the old aristocratic colors breaking through.

You can improve your education and even change your environment but what you really ARE was all settled when your parents www born. SELECTED PARENTS WILL HAVE BETTER CHILDREN.

I do have strong feelings about the aristocracy: they serve a purpose, but it's a sort of insular strand of society.

It often runs in families," she remarked: "just as a love for pastry does.

Information is crucial to our biological substance - our genetic code is information. But before 1950, it was not obvious that inheritance had anything to do with code. And it was only after the invention of the telegraph that we understood that our nerves carry messages, just like wires.

The distinctions separating the social classes are false, in the last analysis they rest on force.

Our democracy may have an aristocracy of talent, as Jefferson said – which is fine – but we don’t want everyone else to be left out. Something like that seems to be happening, though.

There is no distinction of persons among them, and deference is shown to merit rather than to noble blood.

To their entertainments princes invite only the nobility; but when they meet with misfortune, they invite also citizens.

There is no society, however free and democratic, where wealth will not create an aristocracy.

What is Aristocracy? A corporation of the best, the bravest.

Keep up the middle class; lop off aristocracy on the one hand, and a rabble at the other; let the middle class ... have the power.

Thus our [British] democracy was from an early period the most aristocratic, and our aristocracy the most democratic.

The tradesmen are the only gentry in England.

Noble and common blood is of the same color.

Englishmen hate Liberty and Equality too much to understand them. But every Englishman loves a pedigree.

Commoners are not allowed to wear cotton clothing, under pain of death.

From deformed parents, deformed offspring come to be.

A Plowman on his knees is higher than a Gentleman on his legs.

UNFIT HUMAN TRAITS Such As Feeblemindedness, Epilepsy, Criminality, Insanity, Alcoholism and Many Others Run In Families And Are Inherited in Exactly The Same Was As Colour In Guinea Pigs. If ALL MARRIAGES WERE EUGENIC, We could BREED OUT Most Of This Unfitness In THREE GENERATIONS.

We were working class, and you don't lose that. Later on, I bolted on media middle class... and now people like me are in the House of Lords.