Basic Research Quotes

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  Basic research is what I am doing when I don't know what I am doing.

  Wernher von Braun

  Wisdom, Witty, Humorous

  "Work, Society, and Culture". The New York Times, December 16, 1957.

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• If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it?

  Albert Einstein

  Love, Inspirational, Funny

  "Personal Quotes/ Biography". www.imdb.com.

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• I believe in innovation and that the way you get innovation is you fund research and you learn the basic facts.

  Bill Gates

  Success, Believe, Innovation

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• Why do we do basic research? To learn about ourselves.

  Walter Gilbert

  Research

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• Governments will always play a huge part in solving big problems. They set public policy and are uniquely able to provide the resources to make sure solutions reach everyone who needs them. They also fund basic research, which is a crucial component of the innovation that improves life for everyone.

  Bill Gates

  Government, Play, Innovation

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• Basic research is like shooting an arrow in the air and, where it lands, painting a target.

  Homer Burton Adkins

  Business, Science, Air

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• Societies will, of course, wish to exercise prudence in deciding which technologies that is, which applications of science are to be pursued and which not. But without funding basic research, without supporting the acquisition of knowledge for its own sake, our options become dangerously limited.

  Carl Sagan

  Exercise, Technology, Wish

  Carl Sagan (2012). “Dragons of Eden: Speculations on the Evolution of Human Intelligence”, p.245, Ballantine Books

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• Basic scientific research is scientific capital.

  Vannevar Bush

  Science, Research, Accounts

  United States. Office of Scientific Research and Development, Vannevar Bush (1945). “Science, the endless frontier: A report to the President”, p.2

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• If you don't invest in basic research at some stage you start losing the basis of applied research.

  Rolf-Dieter Heuer

  Research, Losing, Stage

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• Most of my scientific work has been basic research. There were no immediate uses for my discoveries, but today the radioisotopes are the workhorses of nuclear medicine, an isotope of plutonium is a major energy source in the space program, and the element americium is critical to the smoke detectors in every house in the country.

  Glenn T. Seaborg

  Country, Space, Discovery

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• I support basic research, which can lead to discoveries that change our world, expand our horizons and save lives.

  Lamar S. Smith

  Our World, Discovery, Support

  "National Science Foundation funded climate change musical to tune of $700,000" by Perry Chiaramonte, www.foxnews.com. March 31, 2014.

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• If our society continues to support basic research on how living organisms function, it is likely that my great grandchildren will be spared the agony of losing family members to most types of cancer.

  Paul D. Boyer

  Cancer, Grandchildren, Agony

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• Exploration, of course, is going to new places, but I don't think we go to new places just solely to say: "Well, we've been there," and come back, interesting though it may be. To me, each time we go farther into space we should use that to do basic research - basic research that can't be done before you go there.

  John Glenn

  Thinking, Space, Interesting

  Source: beforeitsnews.com

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• It's basic research: shoot an arrow in the air. Where it lands, paint a bullseye.

  Elizabeth Streb

  Air, Land, Arrows

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• It is when physicians are bogged down by their incomplete technologies, by the innumerable things they are obliged to do in medicine when they lack a clear understanding of disease mechanisms, that the deficiencies of the health-care system are most conspicuous. If I were a policy-maker, interested in saving money for health care over the long haul, I would regard it as an act of high prudence to give high priority to a lot more basic research in biologic science.

  Lewis Thomas

  Technology, Medicine, Long

  Lewis Thomas (1990). “A Long Line of Cells Collected Essays”

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• The companies that can afford to do basic research (and can't afford not to) are ones that dominate their markets. ... It's cheap insurance, since failing to do basic research guarantees that the next major advance will be oened by someone else.

  Robert X. Cringely

  Science, Guarantees That, Research

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• When it comes to the budget, we know that we shouldn't be cutting more on core investments, like education, that are going to help us grow in the future. And we've already seen the deficit cut in half. It's going down faster than any time in the last 60 years. So why would we make more cuts in education, more cuts in basic research? Nobody thinks that's a good idea.

  Barack Obama

  Education, Money, Party

  "New Day" with Chris Cuomo, www.cnn.com. August 23, 2013.

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• It was basic research in the photoelectric field-in the photoelectric effect that would one day lead to solar panels. It was basic research in physics that would eventually produce the CAT scan. The calculations of today's GPS satellites are based on the equations that Einstein put to paper more than a century ago.

  Barack Obama

  Cat, Science, Gps

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• Invest in basic research and recruit the best minds.

  Ahmed H. Zewail

  Mind, Research, Recruit

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• America needs the best education system in the world. We have it in higher education. We do not have it in general education for all of our people - the K-12 education. Other nations are far, far outdoing the United States in that area. We still have the lead in research, but once again, other nations are pouring more into research also. We still have a lead, but to me it's just very, very important that we keep that lead in basic research.

  John Glenn

  America, People, Important

  Source: beforeitsnews.com

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• Government isn't that good at rapid advancement of technology. It tends to be better at funding basic research. To have things take off, you've got to have commercial companies do it.

  Elon Musk

  Technology, Government, Advancement

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• Willis Rodney Whitney ... once compared scientific research to a bridge being constructed by a builder who was fascinated by the construction problems involved. Basic research, he suggested, is such a bridge built wherever it strikes the builder's fancy-wherever the construction problems seem to him to be most challenging. Applied research, on the other hand, is a bridge built where people are waiting to get across the river. The challenge to the builder's ingenuity and skill, Whitney pointed out, can be as great in one case as the other.

  Chauncey Guy Suits

  Science, Hands, Bridges

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• Basic research is not the same as development. A crash programme for the latter may be successful; but for the former it is like trying to make nine women pregnant at once in the hope of getting a baby in a month's time.

  Richard Doll

  Baby, Successful, Trying

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• The hybridoma technology was a by-product of basic research. Its success in practical applications is to a large extent the result of unexpected and unpredictable properties of the method. It thus represents another clear-cut example of the enormous practical impact of an investment in research which might not have been considered commercially worthwhile, or of immediate medical relevance. It resulted from esoteric speculations, for curiosity's sake, only motivated by a desire to understand nature.

  Cesar Milstein

  Success, Nature, Cutting

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• Government investment unlocks a huge amount of private sector activity, but the basic research that we put into IT work that led to the Internet and lots of great companies and jobs, the basic work we put into the health care sector, where it's over $30 billion a year in R&D that led the biotech and pharma jobs. And it creates jobs and it creates new technologies that will be productized. But the government has to prime the pump here. The basic ideas, as in those other industries, start with government investment.

  Bill Gates

  Jobs, Technology, Government

  "Bill Gates On The Future Of American Energy". "All Things Considered" with Guy Raz, www.npr.org. June 13, 2010.

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