Best 31 quotes of John Charles Polanyi on MyQuotes

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 thousands of supra-national NGOs.

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.

Authority in science exists to be questioned, since heresy is the spring from which new ideas flow.

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.]

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 gives the best value.

Even in the world of molecules the civilising influence of modest restraints is a cause for rejoicing.

For science must breathe the oxygen of freedom.

Idealism is the highest form of reason.

If we treasure our own experience and regard it as real, we must also treasure other people's experience.

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.

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.

In education the appetite does indeed grow with eating. I have never known anyone to abandon study because they knew too much.

In nation after nation, democracy has taken the place of autocracy.

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.

[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.

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.

It takes a trained and discerning researcher to keep the goal in sight, and to detect evidence of the creeping progress toward it.

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.

Science gives us a powerful vocabulary, and it is impossible to produce a vocabulary with which one can only say nice things.

Science is a collection of stories, linking characters worthy of notice.

Science is an enterprise that can only flourish if it puts the truth ahead of nationality, ethnicity, class and color.

Science never gives up searching for truth, since it never claims to have achieved it.

Scientists and scholars should constitute themselves as an international NGO of exceptional authority.

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.

The eye searches for shapes. It searches for a beginning, a middle, and an end.

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 contrary, it is integral to science, as also to scholarship in general.

Though neglectful of their responsibility to protect science, scientists are increasingly aware of their responsibility to society.

Though we explore in a culturally-conditioned way, the reality we sketch is universal.

Today, Academies of Science use their influence around the world in support of human rights.

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.