Jonas Salk Quotes
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Are we being good ancestors?
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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.
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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.
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Intuition will tell the thinking mind where to look next.
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If all insects disappeared, all life on earth would perish. If all humans disappeared, all life on earth would flourish.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Your dreams tell you what to do; your reason tells you how to do it.
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Evolution favors the survival of the wisest.
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I think of evolution as an error-making and error-correcting process, and we are constantly learning from experience.
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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.
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Find the right questions. You don't invent the answers, you reveal the answers.
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The most important question we must ask ourselves is, 'Are we being good ancestors?'
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There is no such thing as failure, there's just giving up too soon.
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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.
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Nothing happens quite by chance. It's a question of accretion of information and experience.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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It is courage based on confidence, not daring, and it is confidence based on experience.
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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.
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I pictured myself as a virus or a cancer cell and tried to sense what it would be like.
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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.
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The mind, in addition to medicine, has powers to turn the immune system around.
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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.
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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.
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Eventually we'll realize that if we destroy the ecosystem, we destroy ourselves.
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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.
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[Who owns the patent on this vaccine?] Well, the people, I would say. There is no patent. Could you patent the sun?
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