Would I lay down my life to save my brother? No, but I would to save two brothers or eight cousins.- John B. S. Haldane
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.
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.
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.
To the biologist the problem of socialism appears largely as a problem of size.
There is no great invention, from fire to flying, which has not been hailed as an insult to some god.
There can be no truce between science and religion.
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.
The extreme socialists desire to run every nation as a single business concern.
My own suspicion is that the universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose.
It is my supposition that the Universe in not only queerer than we imagine, is queerer than we can imagine.
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.
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.
I wish I had the voice of Homer to sing of rectal carcinoma.
I think, however, that so long as our present economic and national systems continue, scientific research has little to fear.
