Quotes from John Polanyi

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Science never gives up searching for truth, since it never claims to have achieved it. It is civilizing because it puts truth ahead of all else, including personal interests.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

If we treasure our own experience and regard it as real, we must also treasure other people's experience. Reality is no less precious if it presents itself to someone else. All are discoverers, and if we disenfranchise any, all suffer.

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.

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.

The most exciting thing in the twentieth century is science.

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

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.