John Charles Polanyi Quotes

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.
John Charles Polanyi

Society, Sense, United

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

Respect, Science, Technology

Better to die in the pursuit of civilized values, we believed, than in a flight underground. We were offering a value system couched in the language of science.
John Charles Polanyi

Science, Die, Language

For scholarship - if it is to be scholarship - requires, in addition to liberty, that the truth take precedence over all sectarian interests, including self-interest.
John Charles Polanyi

Truth, Liberty, Interests

For science must breathe the oxygen of freedom.
John Charles Polanyi

Freedom, Science, Breathe

Human dignity is better served by embracing knowledge.
John Charles Polanyi

Knowledge, Human, Dignity

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

Experience, Real, Treasure

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

Democracy, After, Place

In the late 1950s a major topic under discussion was whether Canada should acquire nuclear weapons.
John Charles Polanyi

Whether, Late, Nuclear

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

Individual, Nuclear, Weapons

It is this, at its most basic, that makes science a humane pursuit; it acknowledges the commonality of people's experience.
John Charles Polanyi

Experience, Science, Makes

Others think it the responsibility of scientists to coerce the rest of society, because they have the power that derives from special knowledge.
John Charles Polanyi

Power, Society, Knowledge

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

Worth, Ourselves, Though

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

Science, End, Journey

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

Science, Nice, Powerful

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

Truth, Science, Since

Scientia is knowledge. It is only in the popular mind that it is equated with facts.
John Charles Polanyi

Knowledge, Mind, Facts

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

Themselves, Authority, Scientists

Some dreamers demand that scientists only discover things that can be used for good.
John Charles Polanyi

Science, Good, Used

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

Moment, Audience, Shared

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

End, Beginning, Eye

The most exciting thing in the twentieth century is science.
John Charles Polanyi

Science, Exciting, Century

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

Respect, Science, Technology

The scientific and scholarly community is marked by the belief that the truth is to be found in all; none can claim it as their monopoly.
John Charles Polanyi

Truth, Found, Belief

The time has come to underscore the fact that our and others' rights are contingent on our willingness to assert and defend them.
John Charles Polanyi

Time, Others, Fact

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Biography

Nationality: Canadian

Type: Scientist

Born: January 23, 1929

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