John Charles Polanyi Quotes

44 quotes in 604 categories

• Authority in science exists to be questioned, since heresy is the spring from which new ideas flow.
• The eye searches for shapes. It searches for a beginning, a middle, and an end.
• Science is an enterprise that can only flourish if it puts the truth ahead of nationality, ethnicity, class and color.
• It is folly to use as one's guide in the selection of fundamental science the criterion of utility. Not because (scientists)... despise utility. But because.…
• I knew, however, that it would cost ten times what I had available in order to build a molecular beam machine. I decided to follow…
• It takes a trained and discerning researcher to keep the goal in sight, and to detect evidence of the creeping progress toward it.
• Young people ask me if this country is serious about science. They aren't thinking about the passport that they will hold, but the country that…
• Reality is no less precious if it presents itself to someone else. All are discoverers, and if we disenfranchise any, all suffer.
• Though we explore in a culturally-conditioned way, the reality we sketch is universal.
• Some dreamers demand that scientists only discover things that can be used for good.
• The applause is a celebration not only of the actors but also of the audience. It constitutes a shared moment of delight.
• Today, Academies of Science use their influence around the world in support of human rights.
• Instead, in the absence of respect for human rights, science and its offspring technology have been used in this century as brutal instruments for oppression.
• In nation after nation, democracy has taken the place of autocracy.
• Individual scientists like myself - and many more conspicuous - pointed to the dangers of radioactive fallout over Canada if we were to launch nuclear…
• At the heart of science lies discovery which involves a change in worldview. Discovery in science is possible only in societies which accord their citizens…
• Science is a collection of stories, linking characters worthy of notice.
• A new sense of shared international responsibility is unmistakable in the voices of the United Nations and its agencies, and in the civil society of…
• The respect for human rights, essential if we are to use technology wisely, is not something alien that must be grafted onto science. On the…
• Discoveries that are anticipated are seldom the most valuable. ... It's the scientist free to pilot his vessel across hidden shoals into open seas who…

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