No scientist is admired for failing in the attempt to solve problems that lie beyond his competence. ... Good scientists study the… — Peter Medawar Copy Share Image
All scientists know of colleagues whose minds are so well equipped with the means of refutation that no new idea has the… — Peter Medawar Copy Share Image
Scientists who think science consists of unprejudiced data-gathering without speculation are merely cows grazing on the pasture of knowledge. — Peter Medawar Copy Share Image
Scientists are people of very dissimilar temperaments doing different things in very different ways. Among scientists are collectors, classifiers and compulsive tidiers-up;… — Peter Medawar Copy Share Image
Simultaneous discovery is utterly commonplace, and it was only the rarity of scientists, not the inherent improbability of the phenomenon, that made… — Peter Medawar Copy Share Image
The USA is so enormous, and so numerous are its schools, colleges and religious seminaries, many devoted to special religious beliefs ranging from the… — Peter Medawar Copy Share
[A certain class of explanations in science are] analgesics that dull the ache of incomprehension without removing the cause. — Peter Medawar Copy Share
Twice in my life I have spent two weary and scientifically profitless years seeking evidence to corroborate dearly loved hypotheses that later proved to… — Peter Medawar Copy Share
If politics is the art of the possible, research is surely the art of the soluble. Both are immensely practical-minded affairs. — Peter Medawar Copy Share
Ask a scientist what he conceives the scientific method to be and he will adopt an expression that is at once solemn and shifty-eyed:… — Peter Medawar Copy Share
The human mind treats a new idea the way the body treats a strange protein; it rejects it. — Peter Medawar Copy Share
I once spoke to a human geneticist who declared that the notion of intelligence was quite meaningless, so I tried calling him unintelligent. He… — Peter Medawar Copy Share
I reckon that for all the use it has been to science about four-fifths of my time has been wasted, and I believe this… — Peter Medawar Copy Share
We shall not read it for its sociological insights, which are non-existent, nor as science fiction, because it has a general air of implausibility;… — Peter Medawar Copy Share
The Phenomenon of Man stands square in the tradition of Naturphilosophie, a philosophical indoor pastime of German origin which does not seem even by… — Peter Medawar Copy Share
If a person is A) poorly, B) receives treatment intended to make him better, and C) gets better, then no power of reasoning known… — Peter Medawar Copy Share
We cannot point to a single definitive solution of any one of the problems that confront us — political, economic, social or moral, that… — Peter Medawar Copy Share
