Jonas Salk Quotes

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.

The people - could you patent the sun ?

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

Our greatest responsibility is to be good ancestors.

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

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.

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

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

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

What makes your heart leap?

Intuition will tell the thinking mind where to look next.

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

Our greatest responsiblity is to be good ancestors.

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