John Charles Polanyi

The respect for human rights, essential if we are to use technology wisely, is not something alien that must be grafted onto…

— John Charles Polanyi

In the late 1950s a major topic under discussion was whether Canada should acquire nuclear weapons.

— John Charles Polanyi

Though neglectful of their responsibility to protect science, scientists are increasingly aware of their responsibility to society.

— John Charles Polanyi

Some dreamers demand that scientists only discover things that can be used for good.

— John Charles Polanyi

[Intellectual courage is] the quality that allows one to believe in one's judgement in the face of disappointment and widespread skepticism. Intellectual…

— John Charles Polanyi

It takes a trained and discerning researcher to keep the goal in sight, and to detect evidence of the creeping progress toward…

— John Charles Polanyi

Individual scientists like myself - and many more conspicuous - pointed to the dangers of radioactive fallout over Canada if we were…

— John Charles Polanyi

At the heart of science lies discovery which involves a change in worldview. Discovery in science is possible only in societies which…

— John Charles Polanyi

Science exists, moreover, only as a journey toward troth. Stifle dissent and you end that journey.

— John Charles Polanyi

Science never gives up searching for truth, since it never claims to have achieved it.

— John Charles Polanyi

The applause is a celebration not only of the actors but also of the audience. It constitutes a shared moment of delight.

— John Charles Polanyi

Nothing is more irredeemably irrelevant than bad science.

— John Charles Polanyi

If we treasure our own experience and regard it as real, we must also treasure other people's experience.

— John Charles Polanyi

What makes the Universal Declaration an epochal document is first of all its global impetus and secondly the breadth of its claims,…

— John Charles Polanyi

Instead, in the absence of respect for human rights, science and its offspring technology have been used in this century as brutal…

— John Charles Polanyi

Though we explore in a culturally-conditioned way, the reality we sketch is universal.

— John Charles Polanyi

A wise man in China asked his gardener to plant a shrub. The gardener objected that it only flowered once in a…

— John Charles Polanyi

A new sense of shared international responsibility is unmistakable in the voices of the United Nations and its agencies, and in the…

— John Charles Polanyi

In nation after nation, democracy has taken the place of autocracy.

— John Charles Polanyi

Others think it the responsibility of scientists to coerce the rest of society, because they have the power that derives from special…

— John Charles Polanyi

For science must breathe the oxygen of freedom.

— John Charles Polanyi

It is folly to use as one's guide in the selection of fundamental science the criterion of utility. Not because (scientists)... despise…

— John Charles Polanyi

Scientia is knowledge. It is only in the popular mind that it is equated with facts.

— John Charles Polanyi

Science gives us a powerful vocabulary, and it is impossible to produce a vocabulary with which one can only say nice things.

— John Charles Polanyi

Idealism is the highest form of reason.

— John Charles Polanyi