A biography for John Polanyihasn’t been written yet.
“The scientific and scholarly community is marked by the belief that the truth is to be found in all; none can claim it as their monopoly.”
“If we treasure our own experience and regard it as real, we must also treasure other people's experience.”
“The eye searches for shapes. It searches for a beginning, a middle, and an end.”
“Under this scientific and moral pressure, the Canadian government conceded publicly that the use of these weapons in Vietnam was, in their view, a contravention of the Geneva Protocol.”
“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.”
“Science never gives up searching for truth, since it never claims to have achieved it.”
“For scholarship - if it is to be scholarship - requires, in addition to liberty, that the truth take precedence over all sectarian interests, including self-interest.”
“Our assessment of socio-economic worth is largely a sham. We scientists should not lend ourselves to it - though we routinely do. We should, instead, insist on applying the criterion of quality.”
“Others think it the responsibility of scientists to coerce the rest of society, because they have the power that derives from special knowledge.”
“Better to die in the pursuit of civilized values, we believed, than in a flight underground. We were offering a value system couched in the language of science.”
“Today, Academies of Science use their influence around the world in support of human rights.”
“Scientists and scholars should constitute themselves as an international NGO of exceptional authority.”
“In nation after nation, democracy has taken the place of autocracy.”
“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.”