"The four stages of acceptance: 1. This is worthless nonsense. 2. This is an interesting, but perverse, point of view. 3. This is true, but quite uni… - J.B.S. Haldane

"The four stages of acceptance:
1. This is worthless nonsense.
2. This is an interesting, but perverse, point of view.
3. This is true, but quite unimportant.
4. I always said so."

(Review of The Truth About Death, in: Journal of Genetics 1963, Vol. 58, p.464)

English
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About J.B.S. Haldane

John Burdon Sanderson Haldane (5 November 1892 – 1 December 1964) was a British geneticist and evolutionary biologist.

Biography information from Wikiquote

Also Known As

Native Name: John Burdon Sanderson Haldane
Alternative Names: J. B. S. Haldane
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Shorter versions of this quote

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.

Additional quotes by J.B.S. Haldane

[F]our hundred years hence the power question in England may be solved somewhat as follows: The country will be covered with rows of metallic windmills working electric motors [generators] which in their turn supply current at a very high voltage to great electric mains. At suitable distances, there will be great power stations where during windy weather the surplus power will be used for the electrolytic decomposition of water into oxygen and hydrogen. ...In times of calm, the gasses will be recombined in explosion motors working dynamos which produce electrical energy once more, or more probably in oxidation cells.

The universe is not only stranger than we imagine; but stranger than we CAN imagine.

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The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions. These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.

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