A Quote by Peter Agre

To my knowledge, there's never been a scientist in the U.S. Senate. — © Peter Agre
To my knowledge, there's never been a scientist in the U.S. Senate.
I have been asked whether I would agree that the tragedy of the scientist is that he is able to bring about great advances in our knowledge, which mankind may then proceed to use for purposes of destruction. My answer is that this is not the tragedy of the scientist; it is the tragedy of mankind.
The image of the disinterested, dispassionate scientist is no less false than that of the mad scientist who is willing to destroy the world for knowledge.
... the scientist would maintain that knowledge in of itself is wholly good, and that there should be and are methods of dealing with misuses of knowledge by the ruffian or the bully other than by suppressing the knowledge.
When it comes to Senate reform, in general, I've always been a believer in an elected Senate and would hope to achieve aspects of Senate reform.
The scientist is not much given to talking of the riddle of the universe. "Riddle" is not a scientific term. The conception of a riddle is "something which can he solved." And hence the scientist does not use that popular phrase. We don't know the why of anything. On that matter we are no further advanced than was the cavedweller. The scientist is contented if he can contribute something toward the knowledge of what is and how it is.
Bob Torricelli, Democrat member of the Senate, was basically about to be thrown out of office on corruption charges, and he went to the floor of the Senate to deny everything. And we juxtaposed his denials with an attorney from someone in an action against Torricelli who was listing all of the gifts and all the bribes that Torricelli had been given and offered in exchange for policy considerations on the Senate floor. So he's on the Senate floor denying it.
You now have six-year campaigns for the Senate - you never stop running. It's not uncommon for a member of the Senate to have a fundraising breakfast, a fundraising lunch and a fundraising dinner, and then when the Senate breaks for the week to go home, more fundraisers. And that's driven by the cost of campaigning.
If I could relive my life, what I would do is work with scientists. But not one scientist, because they're locked into their little specializations. I'd go from scientist to scientist to scientist, like a bee goes from flower to flower.
I was appointed to the Senate, and it has been my job to serve in the Senate and then to earn the vote of Minnesotans.
Religion is still parasitic in the interstices of our knowledge which have not yet been filled. Like bed-bugs in the cracks of walls and furniture, miracles lurk in the lacunae of science. The scientist plasters up these cracks in our knowledge; the more militant Rationalist swats the bugs in the open. Both have their proper sphere and they should realize that they are allies.
Well, I mean, I'm still a scientist, you know. I think once a scientist, always a scientist.
[Thomas Henry] Huxley, I believe, was the greatest Englishman of the Nineteenth Century—perhaps the greatest Englishman of all time. When one thinks of him, one thinks inevitably of such men as Goethe and Aristotle. For in him there was that rich, incomparable blend of intelligence and character, of colossal knowledge and high adventurousness, of instinctive honesty and indomitable courage which appears in mankind only once in a blue moon. There have been far greater scientists, even in England, but there has never been a scientist who was a greater man.
The chaplain of the Senate does not pray for the Senate. He watches the Senate and prays for the country.
A typical day in the Senate requires several trips to the Senate floor and back, although the journey is usually underground so that on some days, once I arrive at work, I never see the sun.
As a scientist, I want to go to Mars and back to asteroids and the Moon because I'm a scientist. But I can tell you, I'm not so naive a scientist to think that the nation might not have geopolitical reasons for going into space.
I think that's something a scientist can do because a scientist works at a border, at the edge of science, at the edge of knowledge, and so there's a lot of fun of reaching out and thinking about things that other people didn't think about. And so it has a kind of exploratory notion, kind of adventurous part in it.
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