M Polanyi Quotes & Sayings

Instead, in the absence of respect for human rights, science and its offspring technology have been used in this century as brutal instruments for oppression. — John Charles Polanyi

In nation after nation, democracy has taken the place of autocracy. — John Charles Polanyi

Science is an enterprise that can only flourish if it puts the truth ahead of nationality, ethnicity, class and color. — John C. Polanyi

The eye searches for shapes. It searches for a beginning, a middle, and an end. — John Charles Polanyi

I knew, however, that it would cost ten times what I had available in order to build a molecular beam machine. I decided to follow a byway, rather than the highway. It is a procedure I have subsequently recommended to beginning scientists in this country, where research strategy is best modelled on that used by Wolfe at the Plains of Abraham. — John Charles Polanyi

...To allow the market mechanism to be sole director of the fate of human beings and their natural environment, indeed, even of the amount and use of purchasing power, would result in the demolition of society. For the alleged commodity, "labor power" cannot be shoved about, used indiscriminately, or even left unused, without affecting the human individual who happens to be the bearer of this peculiar commodity. In disposing of a man's labor power the system would, incidentally, dispose of the physical, psychological, and moral entity of "man" attached to the tag. Robbed of the protective covering of cultural institutions, human beings would perish from the the effects of social exposure; they would die as the victims of acute social dislocation through vice, perversion, crime, and starvation. Nature would be reduced to its elements, neighborhoods and landscapes defiled, rovers polluted, military safety jeopardized, the power to produce food and raw materials destroyed... — Karl Polanyi

But the system of prices ruling the market not only transmits information in the light of which economic agents can mutually adjust their actions, it also provides them with an incentive to exercise economy in terms of money. — Michael Polanyi

Our thesis is that the idea of a self-adjusting market implied a stark utopia. Such an institution could not exist for any length of time without annihilating the human and natural substance of society; it would have physically destroyed man and transformed his surroundings into a wilderness. — Karl Polanyi

In education the appetite does indeed grow with eating. I have never known anyone to abandon study because they knew too much. — John Charles Polanyi

Poverty was nature surviving in society; that the limitedness of food and the unlimitedness of men had come to an issue just when the promise of boundless increase of wealth burst in upon us made the irony only the more bitter. — Karl Polanyi

Human dignity is better served by embracing knowledge. — John Charles Polanyi

For science must breathe the oxygen of freedom. — John Charles Polanyi

At the heart of science lies discovery which involves a change in worldview. Discovery in science is possible only in societies which accord their citizens the freedom to pursue the truth where it may lead and which therefore have respect for different paths to that truth. — John Charles Polanyi

Today, Academies of Science use their influence around the world in support of human rights. — John Charles Polanyi

Theories of evolution must provide for the creative acts which brought such theories into existence. — Michael Polanyi

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

We could not, for example, arrive at a principle like that of entropy without introducing some additional principle, such as randomness, to this topography. — Michael Polanyi

Some dreamers demand that scientists only discover things that can be used for good. That is impossible. Science gives us a powerful vocabulary, and it is impossible to produce a vocabulary with which one can only say nice things. — John Polanyi

Scientia is knowledge. It is only in the popular mind that it is equated with facts. — John Charles Polanyi

A steady recognition that the evils which prevent the fullness of moral development are precisely the elements which are also the source of the power that gives existence to whatever moral accomplishments we see about us may eventually lead us to a tolerance we grant to the internal-combustion engine: it is noisy and smelly, and occasionally, it refuses to start, but it is what gets us to wherever we get.
We must somehow learn to understand and so to tolerate- not destroy- the free society. — Michael Polanyi

These maxims and the art of interpreting them may be said to constitute the premisses of science but I prefer to call them our scientific beliefs. These premisses or beliefs are embodied in a tradition, the tradition of science. — Michael Polanyi

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

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. — John Charles Polanyi

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. — John Polanyi

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

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. — John Polanyi

But even physics cannot be defined from an atomic topography. — Michael Polanyi

The process of philosophic and scientific enlightenment has shaken the stability of beliefs held explicitly as articles of faith. — Michael Polanyi

Science exists, moreover, only as a journey toward troth. Stifle dissent and you end that journey. — John Charles Polanyi

If we define the word Theos as that on which everything else depends but which itself depends on nothing else - a reasonable definition - then none of these scientific theories is theologically neutral. All of them rest on fundamental assumptions which can be questioned. But the questioning, if it is to be rational, has to rely on other fundamental assumptions which can in turn be questioned. It follows (and this is Polanyi's point) that there can be no knowing without personal commitment. We must believe in order to know. — Lesslie Newbigin