Quotes from Peter Medawar

Today the world changes so quickly that in growing up we take leave not just of youth but of the world we were young in.

Today the world changes so quickly that in growing up we take leave not just of youth but of the world we were young in ... Fear and resentment of what is new is really a lament for the memories of our childhood.

A scientist is no more a collector and classifier of facts than a historian is a man who complies and classifies a chronology of the dates of great battles and major discoveries.

I regret my disbelief in God.

Scientists who think science consists of unprejudiced data-gathering without speculation are merely cows grazing on the pasture of knowledge.

Scientific reasoning is a dialogue between the possible and the actual, between proposal and disposal between what might be true, and what is in fact the case.

The alternative to thinking in evolutionary terms is not to think at all.

[A certain class of explanations in science are] analgesics that dull the ache of incomprehension without removing the cause.

Today the world changes so quickly that in growing up we take leave not just of youth but of the world we were young in.

If a scientist were to cut his ear off, no one would take it as evidence of a heightened sensibility.

I do not propose to criticize the fatuous argument I have just outlined; here, to expound is to expose.

If politics is the art of the possible, research is surely the art of the soluble. Both are immensely practical-minded affairs.

Science is the art of the solvable.