Jonas Salk Quotes & Sayings

When you inoculate children with a polio vaccine, you don't sleep well for two or three months. — Jonas Salk

I'm saying that we should trust our intuition. I believe that the principles of universal evolution are revealed to us through intuition. And I think that if we combine our intuition and our reason, we can respond in an evolutionary sound way to our problems. — Jonas Salk

Wisdom: It's something that you know when you see it. You can recognize it, you can experience it. I have defined wisdom as the capacity to make judgments that when looked back upon will seem to have been wise. — Jonas Salk

The art of science is as important as so-called technical science. You need both. It's this combination that must be recognized and acknowledged and valued. — Jonas Salk

What makes your heart leap? — Jonas Salk

As a child I was not interested in science. I was merely interested in things human, the human side of nature, if you like, and I continue to be interested in that. That's what motivates me. — Jonas Salk

Hope lies in dreams, in imagination and in the courage of those who dare to make dreams into reality. — Jonas Salk

Risks, I like to say, always pay off. You learn what to do, or what not to do. — Jonas Salk

I think of the need for more wisdom in the world, to deal with the knowledge that we have. At one time we had wisdom, but little knowledge. Now we have a great deal of knowledge, but do we have enough wisdom to deal with that knowledge? — Jonas Salk

My job is to help people see what I see. If it's of value, fine. And, if it's not of value, then at least I've done what I can do. — Jonas Salk

A good parent gives their child roots and wings. — Jonas Salk

I think of evolution as an error-making and error-correcting process, and we are constantly learning from experience. — Jonas Salk

Who owns the patent on this vaccine?'
'Well, the people, I would say. There is no patent. Could you patent the sun? — Jonas Salk

As a bio-philosopher - as someone who draws upon the scriptures of nature, recognizing that we are the product of the process of evolution, and in a sense, we have become the process itself - through the emergence and evolution of our consciousness, our awareness, our capacity to imagine and to anticipate the future and to choose from amongst alternatives. — Jonas Salk

It is courage based on confidence, not daring, and it is confidence based on experience. — Jonas Salk

Evolution favors the survival of the wisest. — Jonas Salk

There is hope in dreams, imagination, and in the courage of those who wish to make those dreams a reality. — Jonas Salk

Now, some people might look at something and let it go by, because they don't recognize the pattern and the significance. It's the sensitivity to pattern recognition that seems to me to be of great importance. It's a matter of being able to find meaning, whether it's positive or negative, in whatever you encounter. It's like a journey. It's like finding the paths that will allow you to go forward, or that path that has a block that tells you to start over again or do something else. — Jonas Salk

The worst tragedy that could have befallen me was my success. I knew right away that I was through - cast out. — Jonas Salk

One of the greatest rewards for doing can be the chances it gives to do some more - even better. — Jonas Salk

When things get bad enough, then something happens to correct the course. And it's for that reason that I speak about evolution as an error-making and an error-correcting process. And if we can be ever so much better - ever so much slightly better - at error correcting than at error making, then we'll make it. — Jonas Salk

There is no such thing as failure, there's just giving up too soon. — Jonas Salk

Some people are constructive, if you like. Others are destructive. It's this diversity in humankind that results in some making positive contributions and some negative contributions. It's necessary to have enough to make positive contributions to overcome the problems of each age. — Jonas Salk

I have had dreams, and I've had nightmares. I overcame the nightmares because of my dreams. — Jonas Salk

There is a moment of conception and a moment of birth, but between them there is a long period of gestation. — Jonas Salk

In my view, art and the approach to life through art, using it as a vehicle for education and even for doing science is so vital that it is part of a great new revolution that is taking place. I believe we are entering a whole new epoch. — Jonas Salk

It is always with excitement that I wake up in the morning wondering what my intuition will toss up to me, like gifts from the sea. I work with it and rely on it. It's my partner. — Jonas Salk

My ambition was to bring to bear on medicine a chemical approach. I did that by chemical manipulation of viruses and chemical ways of thinking in biomedical research. — Jonas Salk

IT IS SAID TO AWAIT CERTAINTY IS TO AWAIT ETERNITY. — Jonas Salk

The mind, in addition to medicine, has powers to turn the immune system around. — Jonas Salk

I do what I feel impelled to do, as an artist would. Scientists function in the same way. I see all these as creative activities, as all part of the process of discovery. Perhaps that's one of the characteristics of what I call the evolvers, any subset of the population who keep things moving in a positive, creative, constructive way, revealing the truth and beauty that exists in life and in nature. — Jonas Salk

I look upon ourselves as partners in all of this, and that each of us contributes and does what he can do best. And so I see not a top rung and a bottom rung - I see all this horizontally - and I see this as part of a matrix. And I see every human being as having a purpose, a destiny, if you like - the destiny that exists in each of us - and find ways and means to provide such opportunities for everyone. — Jonas Salk

I have come to recognize evolution not only as an active process that I am experiencing at the time, but as something I can guide by the choices I make. — Jonas Salk

Solutions come through evolution. They come through asking the right questions, because the answers pre-exist. It is the questions that we must define and discover. You don't invent the answer-you reveal the answer. — Jonas Salk

You can have a team of unconventional thinkers, as well as conventional thinkers. If you don't have the support of others you cannot achieve anything altogether on your own. It's like a cry in the wilderness. In each instance there were others who could see the same thing, and there were others who could not. It's an obvious difference we see in those who you might say have a bird's eye view, and those who have a worm's eye view. I've come to realize that we all have a different mind set, we all see things differently, and that's what the human condition is really all about. — Jonas Salk

Your dreams tell you what to do; your reason tells you how to do it. — Jonas Salk

I couldn't possibly have become a member of this Institute, you know, if I hadn't organized it myself. — Jonas Salk

It is possible to create an epidemic of health which is self-organizing and self-propelling. — Jonas Salk

I pictured myself as a virus or a cancer cell and tried to sense what it would be like. — Jonas Salk

Nothing happens quite by chance. It's a question of accretion of information and experience. — Jonas Salk

I have the impression that the new generation of young people, are coming up on the scene with a sense "ancestorhood", and with more wisdom than was evident before. — Jonas Salk

A wisdom deficit - fewer elders and even fewer people who listen to them. — Jonas Salk

This is perhaps the most beautiful time in human history; it is really pregnant with all kinds of creative possibilities made possible by science and technology which now constitute the slave of man - if man is not enslaved by it. — Jonas Salk

Life is an error-making and an error-correctin g process, and nature in marking man's papers will grade him for wisdom as measured both by survival and by the quality of life of those who survive. — Jonas Salk

What you see in living systems, and in genetic systems, is that the genes are already there, having arisen in the course of time, and when they are needed they become activated. If they had to be invented, the time would be too late. — Jonas Salk

What is ... important is that we - number one: Learn to live with each other. Number two: try to bring out the best in each other. — Jonas Salk

My life is pretty well at peace, and the profession is more of an avocation. It's a calling, if you like, rather than a job. I do what I feel impelled to do, as an artist would. — Jonas Salk

The most important question we must ask ourselves is, 'Are we being good ancestors?' — Jonas Salk

If humankind would accept and acknowledge this responsibility and become creatively engaged in the process of evolution, consciously as well as unconsciously, a new reality would emerge, and a new age could be born. — Jonas Salk

What people think of as the moment of discovery is really the discovery of the question. — Jonas Salk

I have had dreams and I have had nightmares, but I have conquered my nightmares because of my dreams. — Jonas Salk

Good parents give their children Roots and Wings. Roots to know where home is, wings to fly away and exercise what's been taught them. — Jonas Salk

The reward for work well done is the opportunity to do more. — Jonas Salk

Eventually we'll realize that if we destroy the ecosystem, we destroy ourselves. — Jonas Salk

When I worked on the polio vaccine, I had a theory. I guided each [experiment] by imagining myself in the phenomenon in which I was interested. The intuitive realm ... the realm of the imagination guides my thinking. — Jonas Salk

If all insects disappeared, all life on earth would perish. If all humans disappeared, all life on earth would flourish. — Jonas Salk

Our greatest responsibility is to be good ancestors. — Jonas Salk

Find the right questions. You don't invent the answers, you reveal the answers. — Jonas Salk

If all the insects were to disappear from the earth, within 50 years all life on earth would end. If all human beings disappeared from the earth, within 50 years all forms of life would flourish. — Jonas Salk

Intuition will tell the thinking mind where to look next. — Jonas Salk

Reply when questioned on the safety of the polio vaccine he developed:
It is safe, and you can't get safer than safe. — Jonas Salk

Charlotte's Web Life is magic, the way nature works seems to be quite magical. — Jonas Salk

Are we being good ancestors? — Jonas Salk

The people - could you patent the sun ? — Jonas Salk

We were told in one lecture that it was possible to immunize against diphtheria and tetanus by the use of chemically treated toxins, or toxoids. And the following lecture, we were told that
for immunization against a virus disease, you have to experience the infection, and that you could not induce immunity with the so-called "killed" or inactivated, chemically treated virus preparation. Well, somehow, that struck me. What struck me was that both statements couldn't be true. And I asked why this was so, and the answer that was given was in a sense, 'Because.'
There was no satisfactory answer. — Jonas Salk

I speak about universal evolution and teleological evolution; because I think the process of evolution reflects the wisdom of nature. I see the need for wisdom to become operative. We need to try to put all of these things together in what I call an evolutionary philosophy of our time. — Jonas Salk