John Burdon Sanderson Haldane Quotes

The idea of protoplasm, which was really a name for our ignorance, [is] only a little less misleading than the expression "Vital force".

A cell is regarded as the true biological atom.

This substance, which is manifold in its forms and protean in its transformations, has, in its state of living matter, one physiological name which has become familiar, that of protoplasm.

According to the Law of Biogenesis, life arises only from preexisting life.

A great deal has been learned about cell communication. The universal nature of cellular structure and organization in bacteria, plant and animal cells has been discovered.

I became aware of the very complex internal organization in a cell from the basic science classes, and it made me think about how all that could work. It seemed like a great mystery, especially how organelles in the cell can be arranged in three dimensions, and how thousands of proteins could find their way to the right location in the cells.

In reality, a cell is a biological mini-me compared to the human body. A cell has every biological system that you have.

Throughout history there have been many other examples, similar to that of Haeckel, Huxley and the cell, where a key piece of a particular scientific puzzle was beyond the understanding of the age.

So great was the preference given to sacred over profane learning that Christianity had been in existence fifteen hundred years, and had not produced a single astronomer.

Scientific men can hardly escape the charge of ignorance with regard to the precise effect of the impact of modern science upon the mode of living of the people and upon their civilization. For them, such a charge is worse than that of crime.

A cell is a complex structure, with its investing membrane, nucleus, and nucleolus.

Protoplasm, simple or nucleated, is the formal basis of all life. It is the clay of the potter: which, bake it and paint it as hewill, remains clay, separated by artifice, and not by nature from the commonest brick or sun-dried clod.

It is not a simple life to be a single cell, although I have no right to say so, having been a single cell so long ago myself that I have no memory at all of that stage of my life.

What is intelligence, anyway It is only a word that people use to name those unknown processes with which our brains solve problems we call hard. But whenever you learn a skill yourself, you're less impressed or mystified when other people do the same. This is why the meaning of 'intelligence' seems so elusive: It describes not some definite thing but only the momentary horizon of our ignorance about how minds might work.

The truth may often be carried about by those who themselves remain all unaware of it. They bear that which has weight and substance and yet for them has no name whereby it may be evoked or called forth. They go about ignorant of the true nature of their condition, such are the wiles of truth and such its stratagems.

Examining the world in order to find consolation is very much like looking carefully over the pages of a great book in order to find our own name . ... Whether we find what we want or not, our preoccupation has hindered us from a true knowledge of the contents.

During the century after Newton, it was still possible for a man of unusual attainments to master all fields of scientific knowledge. But by 1800, this had become entirely impracticable.

Every cell is a triumph of natural selection, and we’re made of trillions of cells. Within us, is a little universe.

The young specialist in English Lit, ...lectured me severely on the fact that in every century people have thought they understood the Universe at last, and in every century they were proved to be wrong. It follows that the one thing we can say about our modern "knowledge" is that it is wrong.

Our ignorance of history causes us to slander our own times. The ordinary person today lives better than a king did a century ago but is ungrateful!

Were you here in the bad old days? ... That's why you can't read and write then!

More attention to the History of Science is needed, as much by scientists as by historians, and especially by biologists, and this should mean a deliberate attempt to understand the thoughts of the great masters of the past, to see in what circumstances or intellectual milieu their ideas were formed, where they took the wrong turning or stopped short on the right track.

The chief business of seventeenth-century philosophy was to reckon with seventeenth-century science... the chief business of twentieth-century philosophy is to reckon with twentieth-century history.

When we meet a fact which contradicts a prevailing theory, we must accept the fact and abandon the theory, even when the theory is supported by great names and generally accepted.

One has only to contemplate the magnitude of this task to concede that the spontaneous generation of a living organism is impossible. Yet here we are-as a result, I believe, of spontaneous generation.