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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. .. useful outcomes are best identified after the making of discoveries, rather than before.

John Charles Polanyi

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John Charles Polanyi
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More quotes by John Charles Polanyi

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Some dreamers demand that scientists only discover things that can be used for good.
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Individual scientists like myself - and many more conspicuous - pointed to the dangers of radioactive fallout over Canada if we were to launch nuclear weapons to intercept incoming bombers.
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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 they must rely on for support and encouragement.
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Science is a collection of stories, linking characters worthy of notice.
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Science never gives up searching for truth, since it never claims to have achieved it.
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Science exists, moreover, only as a journey toward troth. Stifle dissent and you end that journey.
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Today, Academies of Science use their influence around the world in support of human rights.
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Nothing is more irredeemably irrelevant than bad science.
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[Intellectual courage is] the quality that allows one to believe in one's judgement in the face of disappointment and widespread skepticism. Intellectual courage is even rarer than physical courage.
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Science gives us a powerful vocabulary, and it is impossible to produce a vocabulary with which one can only say nice things.
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The applause is a celebration not only of the actors but also of the audience. It constitutes a shared moment of delight.
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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 a byway, rather than the highway. It is a procedure I have subsequently recommended to beginning scientists in this country, where research strategy is best modelled on that used by Wolfe at the Plains of Abraham.
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It takes a trained and discerning researcher to keep the goal in sight, and to detect evidence of the creeping progress toward it.
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In nation after nation, democracy has taken the place of autocracy.
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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.
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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 the freedom to pursue the truth where it may lead and which therefore have respect for different paths to that truth.
John Charles Polanyi
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The eye searches for shapes. It searches for a beginning, a middle, and an end.
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Our assessment of socio-economic worth is largely a sham. We scientists should not lend ourselves to it - though we routinely do. We should, instead, insist on applying the criterion of quality.
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Human dignity is better served by embracing knowledge.
John Charles Polanyi
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Though we explore in a culturally-conditioned way, the reality we sketch is universal.
John Charles Polanyi