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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.

John Charles Polanyi

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John Charles Polanyi
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More quotes by John Charles Polanyi

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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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In nation after nation, democracy has taken the place of autocracy.
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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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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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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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Though we explore in a culturally-conditioned way, the reality we sketch is universal.
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If we treasure our own experience and regard it as real, we must also treasure other people's experience.
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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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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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The eye searches for shapes. It searches for a beginning, a middle, and an end.
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Human dignity is better served by embracing knowledge.
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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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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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Science exists, moreover, only as a journey toward troth. Stifle dissent and you end that journey.
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Nothing is more irredeemably irrelevant than bad science.
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Some dreamers demand that scientists only discover things that can be used for good.
John Charles Polanyi
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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.
John Charles Polanyi
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Science never gives up searching for truth, since it never claims to have achieved it.
John Charles Polanyi
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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.
John Charles Polanyi
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Today, Academies of Science use their influence around the world in support of human rights.
John Charles Polanyi