John Polanyi Quotes

• 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 Polanyi

• When, as we must often do, we fear science, we really fear ourselves.

  John Polanyi

• What makes the Universal Declaration an epochal document is first of all its global impetus and secondly the breadth of its claims, a commitment to a new social contract, binding on all the Governments of the world.

  John Polanyi

• Under this scientific and moral pressure, the Canadian government conceded publicly that the use of these weapons in Vietnam was, in their view, a contravention of the Geneva Protocol.

  John Polanyi

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

  John Polanyi

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

  John Polanyi

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

  John Polanyi

• The time has come to underscore the fact that our and others’ rights are contingent on our willingness to assert and defend them.

  John Polanyi

• 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 Polanyi

• 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 Polanyi

• The most exciting thing in the twentieth century is science.

  John Polanyi

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

  John Polanyi

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

  John Polanyi

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

  John Polanyi

• Scientia is knowledge. It is only in the popular mind that it is equated with facts.

  John Polanyi

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

  John Polanyi

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

  John Polanyi

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

  John Polanyi

• 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 Polanyi

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

  John Polanyi

John Polanyi (32)

Birth:	23rd January, 1929
Nationality:	Canadian
Profession:	Chemist

About

John Charles Polanyi was born in Berlin, Germany. He is a Canadian chemist. He was awarded the 1986 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his work in chemical kinetics. He shared the prize with Dudley Herschbach of Harvard University and Yuan T. Lee of the University of California. He has received numerous other awards, including Henry Marshall Tory Medal, Wolf Prize in Chemistry, Royal Medal, and Gerhard Herzberg Canada Gold Medal for Science and Engineering. He earned a BS degree in Chemistry in 1949 and his PhD in Chemistry in 1952 both from the University of Manchester. From 1954 until 1956, he was a research associate at Princeton University. He started at the University of Toronto as a lecturer in 1956. He moved up the ranks quickly at the university, being promoted to assistant professor in 1957, associate professor in 1960 and becoming a full professor in 1962.

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