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

Of course that was before reality TV, Twitter, Twaddle, and the like managed to reduce the average attention span of most of the world's population to two minutes, wither our long-term memory to fourteen months, and convince us that the most admirable of all individuals are not the likes of George Washington, Albert Einstein, Marie Curie, Jonas Salk, Mother Teresa, and Nikola Tesla, but instead whatever celebrity just won Dancing with the Stars and whatever dancing cat just drew ten million hits for its YouTube video. — Dean Koontz

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

My two Jamaican cousins ... were studying engineering. 'That's where the money is,' Mom advised ... I was to be an engineering major, despite my allergy to science and math ... Those who preceded me at CCNY include the polio vaccine discoverer, Dr. Jonas Salk ... and eight Nobel Prize winners ... In class, I stumbled through math, fumbled through physics, and did reasonably well in, and even enjoyed, geology. All I ever looked forward to was ROTC.
Autobiographical comments on his original reason for going to the City College of New York, where he shortly turned to his military career. — Colin Powell

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

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

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

Einstein Freud Marx Proust Mahler Mendelssohn Chagall & don't forget Dr. Jonas Salk ... & still they hate us! — Sonia Taitz

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

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

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

Evolution favors the survival of the wisest. — Jonas Salk

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

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

You can never capture a person in picture, never. You might get an interesting expression or gesture. I almost never research a picture subject ahead of time. I think Karsh is full of baloney. Can you imagine spending a whole week out in La Jolla with Jonas Salk soaking up his ambiance, then wind up making him look as if he's in the studio in Ottawa with his thumb under his chin? — Duane Michals

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

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

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

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 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

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

In 1955, amid the great fanfare that accompanied the initial release of the [polio] vaccine, Dr. Jonas Salk was asked who owned the patent. He replied, "Well, the people, I would say. Could you patent the sun? — John Abramson

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

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

There's no harm in a child crying: the harm is done
only if his cries aren't answered ... If you ignore
a baby's signal for help, you don't teach him
ndependence ... What you teach him is that no
other human being will take care of his needs — Lee 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

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

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

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

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

Being natural and matter-of-fact about nudity prevents your children from developing an attitude of shame or disgust about the human body. If parents are very secretive about their bodies and go to great lengths to prevent their children from ever seeing a buttock or breast, children will wonder what is so unusual, and even alarming, about human nudity. — Lee 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

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

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

In an age of explosive development in the realm of medical technology, it is unnerving to find that the discoveries of Salk, Sabin, and even Pasteur remain irrelevant to much of humanity. — Paul Farmer

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

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

problem peaked in 1952 with an outbreak that killed more than three thousand victims, many of them children, and left twenty-one thousand at least partially paralyzed. Soon afterward, vaccines developed by Jonas Salk, Albert Sabin, and a virologist named Hilary Koprowski (about whose controversial career, more later) came into wide use, eventually eliminating poliomyelitis throughout most of the world. In 1988, WHO and several partner institutions — David Quammen

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The larger question is, as virologist Jonas Salk once asked, Are we being good ancestors? — Steven Johnson

Are we being good ancestors? — Jonas Salk

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

Our children are the gift we give the world we'll never see. — Lee 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

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

We are ever on the threshold of new journeys and new discoveries. Can you imagine the excitement of the Wright brothers on the morning of that first flight? The anticipation of Jonas Salk as he analyzed the data that demonstrated a way to prevent polio? — Joseph B. Wirthlin

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

I was a shy ugly kid who led a big fantasy life. I thought I was an angel sent from heaven, to cure polio. When Dr. Salk did that I was really pissed off. — Cher

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

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

Failure is not an event, but rather a judgment about an event. Failure is not something that happens to us or a label we attach to things. It is a way we think about outcomes. Before Jonas Salk developed a vaccine for polio that finally worked, he tried two hundred unsuccessful ones. Somebody asked him, "How did it feel to fail two hundred times?" "I never failed two hundred times in my life," Salk replied. "I was taught not to use the word 'failure.' I just discovered two hundred ways how not to vaccinate for polio. — John Ortberg Jr.

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

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

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