John Charles Polanyi Quotes

Quotes about:

• The applause is a celebration not only of the actors but also of the audience. It constitutes a shared moment of delight.

  John Charles Polanyi

  Actors, Delight, Celebration

  47 Copy quote

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

  John Charles Polanyi

  Giving Up, Giving, Never Giving Up

  13 Copy quote

• For science must breathe the oxygen of freedom.

  John Charles Polanyi

  Oxygen, Breathe

  14 Copy 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

  Wise, Wisdom, Science

  15 Copy quote

• Science exists, moreover, only as a journey toward troth. Stifle dissent and you end that journey.

  John Charles Polanyi

  Journey, Ends, Dissent

  15 Copy quote

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

  John Charles Polanyi

  Science, Ethnicity, Color

  13 Copy quote

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

  John Charles Polanyi

  Molecules, World, Causes

  "Some Concepts In Reaction Dynamics". "Nobel Lectures", Chemistry 1986, p. 403, December 08, 1986.

  14 Copy quote

• 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

  Technology, Rights, Oppression

  14 Copy quote

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

  John Charles Polanyi

  Inspirational, Doe, Too Much

  4 Copy quote

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

  John Charles Polanyi

  Real, People, Treasure

  7 Copy quote

• 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

  Truth, Freedom, Lying

  4 Copy quote

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

  John Charles Polanyi

  Spring, Ideas, Flow

  Address to the Canadian Journalists for Free Expression awards banquet, The Globe and Mail, November 27, 2004.

  4 Copy quote

• [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

  Courage, Disappointment, Believe

  4 Copy quote

• Human dignity is better served by embracing knowledge.

  John Charles Polanyi

  Dignity, Human Dignity, Personal Dignity

  Nobel Banquet Speech, www.nobelprize.org. December 10, 1986.

  10 Copy quote

• When, as we must often do, we fear science, we really fear ourselves. Human dignity is better served by embracing knowledge.

  John Charles Polanyi

  Dignity, Human Dignity, Humans

  Nobel Banquet Speech, www.nobelprize.org. December 10, 1986.

  4 Copy quote

• 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.

  John Charles Polanyi

  Science, Discovery, Sea

  8 Copy quote

• 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

  Powerful, Nice, Vocabulary

  4 Copy quote

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

  John Charles Polanyi

  Character, Science, Stories

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  Science, Discovery, Use

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  Country, Encouragement, Thinking

  7 Copy quote

• 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.

  John Charles Polanyi

  Technology, Rights, Essentials

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  Assessment, Quality, Economic

  8 Copy quote

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

  John Charles Polanyi

  Eye, Shapes, Ends

  7 Copy quote

• Some dreamers demand that scientists only discover things that can be used for good.

  John Charles Polanyi

  Science, Insomnia, Dreamer

  8 Copy quote

• 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

  Science, Sight, Goal

  7 Copy quote

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