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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.

John Charles Polanyi

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John Charles Polanyi
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For science must breathe the oxygen of freedom.
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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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A wise man in China asked his gardener to plant a shrub. The gardener objected that it only flowered once in a hundred years. In that case, said the wise man, plant it immediately. [On the importance of fundamental research.]
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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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Today, Academies of Science use their influence around the world in support of human rights.
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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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Nothing is more irredeemably irrelevant than bad science.
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In nation after nation, democracy has taken the place of autocracy.
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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.
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When, as we must often do, we fear science, we really fear ourselves. Human dignity is better served by embracing knowledge.
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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.
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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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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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Some dreamers demand that scientists only discover things that can be used for good.
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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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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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Science exists, moreover, only as a journey toward troth. Stifle dissent and you end that journey.
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Though we explore in a culturally-conditioned way, the reality we sketch is universal.
John Charles Polanyi
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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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