A Quote by John Polanyi

Some dreamers demand that scientists only discover things that can be used for good. — © John Polanyi
Some dreamers demand that scientists only discover things that can be used for good.
I'm for the dreamers. The only really important things in history have been started by the dreamers. They never know what can't be done.
Everyday some people discover you! What good things have you got for them? Just like preparing a soup, prepare good things and keep them ready for the people who discover you!
When you look at this, I think that there's been such a hard push on this. The reason they're called DREAMers is because that's the most sympathetic term that could be applied to among all of these DREAMers, there are some awfully bad people. And these dreamers go on to the age of 37 or 38 or maybe older.
I feel very strongly indeed that a Cambridge education for our scientists should include some contact with the humanistic side. The gift of expression is important to them as scientists; the best research is wasted when it is extremely difficult to discover what it is all about ... It is even more important when scientists are called upon to play their part in the world of affairs, as is happening to an increasing extent.
I once used the word OBSOLETE in a headline, only to discover that 43 per cent of housewives had no idea what it meant. In another headline, I used the word INEFFABLE, only to discover that I didn't know what it meant myself.
Scientists are people of very dissimilar temperaments doing different things in very different ways. Among scientists are collectors, classifiers and compulsive tidiers-up; many are detectives by temperament and many are explorers; some are artists and others artisans. There are poet-scientists and philosopher-scientists and even a few mystics.
We're dreamers and - since we only have one life, and if we screw up we can get in a world of trouble - we're very intense dreamers.
There's this belief that some things can be taken seriously in an intellectual way, while some things are only entertainment or only a commodity. Or there's some kind of critical consensus that some things are "good," and some things are garbage, throwaway culture. And I think the difference between them, in a lot of ways, is actually much less than people think. Especially when you get down to how they affect the audience.
The way to solve problems in the world is to become scientists and technologists and build things that haven't been built before and discover things that people really don't know about.
Almost all of the demand for oil that suddenly pushed prices up was speculative demand. People began to speculate not only in stocks and bonds and real estate, but also in commodities. The market went up for old tankers, which were used simply to store oil in. A lot of the oil was simply being stored for trading, not used.
Peasants have believed in dowsing, and scientists used to believe that dowsing was only a belief of peasants. Now there are so many scientists who believe in dowsing that the suspicion comes to me that it may only be a myth after all.
You said, 'They’re harmless dreamers and they’re loved by the people.' 'What,' I asked you, 'is harmless about a dreamer, and what,' I asked you, 'is harmless about the love of the people? Revolution only needs good dreamers who remember their dreams.
The DREAMers who are in my state are some of the most ambitious, creative, going to be productive businesspeople and doctors. That's why I'm proud of being the first governor to make sure the DREAMers get access to college education.
There are only two kinds of people in this world. The realists and the dreamers. The realists know where they are going and the dreamers have already been there.
Freedom is the only thing we must demand in life, for all other good things stem from it
Morality has in the past made progress when we broadened the category of things we weren't permitted to harm (animals, 'infidels'); saw through some delusions and rationalisations about what harms are good for people themselves (prison punishment, hysterectomies for unhappy 1950s wives); and readjusted our for-the-good of others criteria so as to demand only reasonable sacrifices (ceasing to use children as handy chimney sweeps).
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