Ivar Giaever Quotes

My experience in science has always been that the future always exceeds what we believe is possible. I suspect that we will explore the universe.

To me, innovations are the wheel, fire, language, movable type. There are not 3 million innovations; there are 3 million inventions.

Calculus, the electrical battery, the telephone, the steam engine, the radio - all these groundbreaking innovations were hit upon by multiple inventors working in parallel with no knowledge of one another.

There are many men now living who were in the habit of using the age-old expression: 'It is as impossible as flying.' The discoveries in physical science, the triumphs in invention, attest the value of the process of trial and error. In large measure, these advances have been due to experimentation.

Most inventions are based on some prior history.

Let me tell you, my friend, that there are things done today in electrical science which would have been deemed unholy by the very man who discovered electricity, who would themselves not so long before been burned as wizards

At every stage of understanding the universe better, the benefits to civilisation have been immeasurable. None of those big leaps were made with us knowing what was going to happen.

We've arranged a civilization in which most crucial elements profoundly depend on science and technology.

If we stop exploring space, we're going to lose the same part of us that found vaccines and penicillin, the part that searches for cures to cancer and AIDS.

Nearly all inventions are not recognised for their positive side either when they're made. So, for example, scientists didn't go out to design a CD machine: they designed a laser. But we got all sorts of things from a laser which we never remotely imagined, and we're still finding things for a laser to do.

Patents should be for technological innovations. So a program for a new machine tool should be patentable but a non-technological innovation, such as grammar-checking software for a word-processor, should not be.

To the Caucasian race is the world indebted for all the great and important discoveries, inventions, and improvements, that have been made in the arts and sciences.

The decline in funding for the physical sciences has put our Nation's capabilities for scientific innovation at risk.

At the present time, when railways, the telegraph, the telephone, to say nothing of other inventions and improvements of importance, have simplified communication between all lands and nations to the last degree, there is scarcely any reason to fear either distance or the estrangement of the several parts of a single whole. Practically distance is almost nonexistent. What to our ancestors appeared simply near at hand now seems to lie immediately before our eyes

Science has changed the face of this earth: it has harnessed the forces of Nature -- forces whose secret laws it had first to discover -- it has created practically a new world within the memory of men living….Science -- the scientists -- doesn't pretend to have grasped in its fingers the Eternal Truth …Science doesn't demand that one believe or be damned. Science reasons. Science investigates. Science tests itself….Science works -- builds -- quietly prevails -- promises little and performs much.

Innovation is the key to the future, but basic research is the key to future innovation.

It takes a thousand men to invent a telegraph, or a steam engine, or a phonograph, or a photograph, or a telephone, or any other Important thing--and the last man gets the credit and we forget the others.

REVOLUTION IN SCIENCE.

Today, the solitary inventor has been over-shadowed by groups of scientists.

Sometimes people invent things because they want to stay alive or feed their children or conquer the village next door. But just as often, new ideas come into the world simply because they're fun. And here's the really strange thing: many of those playful but seemingly frivolous inventions ended up sparking momentous transformations in science, in politics and society.

The United States needs to be a leader in scientific research.

Scientists are not these guys in lab coats deep in the inner bowels of universities and hospitals with their Bunsen burners. They're the people molding the culture that we live in, the future of our culture, and the technology we rely on every day. These are the rock stars of our time right now.

The spending in science and technology need to be to increased.

We have so many thousands of sites to find across the globe and new techniques to test. The field keeps evolving with the technology, which makes things exciting.

Indian science has a bright future.