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Home
Authors
John Charles Polanyi
Canadian
Scientist
About the author
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 Charles Polanyi,
Canadian
Scientist
#Weapons
#Government
#Pressure
#Vietnam
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,
Canadian
Scientist
#Applause
#Actors
#Delight
The eye searches for shapes. It searches for a beginning, a middle, and an end.
John Charles Polanyi,
Canadian
Scientist
#Eye
#End
#Beginning
The most exciting thing in the twentieth century is science.
John Charles Polanyi,
Canadian
Scientist
#Science
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,
Canadian
Scientist
#Technology
#Respect
#Science
#Rights
#Human rights
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,
Canadian
Scientist
#Belief
#Truth
#Community
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,
Canadian
Scientist
#Time
#Fact
#Rights
Though neglectful of their responsibility to protect science, scientists are increasingly aware of their responsibility to society.
John Charles Polanyi,
Canadian
Scientist
#Responsibility
#Science
#Society
#Scientists
Scientists and scholars should constitute themselves as an international NGO of exceptional authority.
John Charles Polanyi,
Canadian
Scientist
#Authority
#Scientists
Today, Academies of Science use their influence around the world in support of human rights.
John Charles Polanyi,
Canadian
Scientist
#Support
#World
#Today
#Science
#Influence
#Rights
#Human rights
Scientia is knowledge. It is only in the popular mind that it is equated with facts.
John Charles Polanyi,
Canadian
Scientist
#Popular
#Mind
#Knowledge
#Facts
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 Charles Polanyi,
Canadian
Scientist
#World
#Commitment
#First
When, as we must often do, we fear science, we really fear ourselves.
John Charles Polanyi,
Canadian
Scientist
#Fear
#Science
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,
Canadian
Scientist
#People
#Support
#Will
#Thinking
#Country
#Science
#Encouragement
Though we explore in a culturally-conditioned way, the reality we sketch is universal.
John Charles Polanyi,
Canadian
Scientist
#Reality
Human dignity is better served by embracing knowledge.
John Charles Polanyi,
Canadian
Scientist
#Dignity
#Knowledge
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,
Canadian
Scientist
#Responsibility
#Society
#Sense
#Nations
#United
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,
Canadian
Scientist
#Science
#Language
#Values
#Pursuit
Some dreamers demand that scientists only discover things that can be used for good.
John Charles Polanyi,
Canadian
Scientist
#Scientists
For science must breathe the oxygen of freedom.
John Charles Polanyi,
Canadian
Scientist
#Freedom
#Science
Science never gives up searching for truth, since it never claims to have achieved it.
John Charles Polanyi,
Canadian
Scientist
#Science
#Truth
If we treasure our own experience and regard it as real, we must also treasure other people's experience.
John Charles Polanyi,
Canadian
Scientist
#People
#Experience
#Treasure
In nation after nation, democracy has taken the place of autocracy.
John Charles Polanyi,
Canadian
Scientist
#Democracy
#Nation
In the late 1950s a major topic under discussion was whether Canada should acquire nuclear weapons.
John Charles Polanyi,
Canadian
Scientist
#Weapons
#Canada
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,
Canadian
Scientist
#Technology
#Respect
#Science
#Rights
#Human rights
#Oppression
#Absence
It is this, at its most basic, that makes science a humane pursuit; it acknowledges the commonality of people's experience.
John Charles Polanyi,
Canadian
Scientist
#People
#Science
#Experience
#Pursuit
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,
Canadian
Scientist
#Responsibility
#Power
#Society
#Rest
#Knowledge
#Scientists
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,
Canadian
Scientist
#Worth
#Quality
#Scientists
Science exists, moreover, only as a journey toward troth. Stifle dissent and you end that journey.
John Charles Polanyi,
Canadian
Scientist
#End
#Science
#Journey
#Dissent
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,
Canadian
Scientist
#Science
#Vocabulary
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,
Canadian
Scientist
#Weapons
#Scientists
#Canada
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,
Canadian
Scientist
#Liberty
#Self
#Truth