Quote

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.]

John Charles Polanyi

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

John Charles Polanyi
Years
Case
Shrubs
Men
Research
Gardener
Asked
Immediately
Hundred
Fundamental
Cases
Fundamentals
Wise
Plant
Shrub
Wisdom
China
Flowered
Science
Importance
Objected

More quotes by John Charles Polanyi

Image
Science exists, moreover, only as a journey toward troth. Stifle dissent and you end that journey.
John Charles Polanyi
Image
If we treasure our own experience and regard it as real, we must also treasure other people's experience.
John Charles Polanyi
Image
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
Image
Human dignity is better served by embracing knowledge.
John Charles Polanyi
Image
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.
John Charles Polanyi
Image
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
Image
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.
John Charles Polanyi
Image
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.
John Charles Polanyi
Image
Today, Academies of Science use their influence around the world in support of human rights.
John Charles Polanyi
Image
Nothing is more irredeemably irrelevant than bad science.
John Charles Polanyi
Image
For science must breathe the oxygen of freedom.
John Charles Polanyi
Image
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
Image
When, as we must often do, we fear science, we really fear ourselves. Human dignity is better served by embracing knowledge.
John Charles Polanyi
Image
[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.
John Charles Polanyi
Image
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
Image
Though we explore in a culturally-conditioned way, the reality we sketch is universal.
John Charles Polanyi
Image
Some dreamers demand that scientists only discover things that can be used for good.
John Charles Polanyi
Image
In nation after nation, democracy has taken the place of autocracy.
John Charles Polanyi
Image
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.
John Charles Polanyi
Image
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.
John Charles Polanyi