John Polanyi

“In nation after nation, democracy has taken the place of autocracy.”

“Individual scientists like myself - and many more conspicuous - pointed to the dangers of radioactive fallout over Canada if we were to launch nuclear weapons to intercept incoming bombers.”

“Others think it the responsibility of scientists to coerce the rest of society, because they have the power that derives from special knowledge.”

“It is this, at its most basic, that makes science a humane pursuit; it acknowledges the commonality of people's experience.”

“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.”

“The time has come to underscore the fact that our and others' rights are contingent on our willingness to assert and defend them.”

“Scientia is knowledge. It is only in the popular mind that it is equated with facts.”

“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.”

“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.”

“The eye searches for shapes. It searches for a beginning, a middle, and an end.”

“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 qual...”

“What makes the Universal Declaration an epochal document is first of all its global impetus and secondly the breadth of its claims, a commitment to a new social contract, binding on all the...”

“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.”