Hans Selye Quotes

I have never discovered a penicillin, and I have not worked in the mines where ores of the more Nobeliferous metals are to be found.

A basic truth that the history of the creation of the transistor reveals is that the foundations of transistor electronics were created by making errors and following hunches that failed to give what was expected.

Synergy and serendipity often play a big part in medical and scientific advances.

we need to work harder if we're going to continue what Carl Sagan saw as a new Renaissance of discovery. One way is by explaining to the Congress and the public why it is in our national interest to get this work funded. We can win this – and do what is right by the American people – if we can get the public to understand what's at stake.

Who does science determines what science gets done.

So now, if we don't fund the physical sciences, where will the Next Big Thing come from?

Sometimes you find yourself digging around for something useful, and you don't necessarily know what it is until you find it. Sometimes it's a word from a book that you read every day.

Wellcome Trust focuses on supporting outstanding researchers, accelerating the application of research, and exploring medicine in historical and cultural contexts. We believe passionately that breakthroughs emerge when the most talented researchers are given the resources and freedom they need to pursue their goals.

The thing that I like about magazines, paper magazines, and papers in any kind of tangible format is the surprise factor of turning the page and not necessarily knowing what you're going to see. You're not looking for something. You're just experiencing something.

We must give scientists the opportunity through funding and time to pursue curiosity-based, long-term, basic-science research.

By the time we made the discovery in 2015, the National Science Foundation had put close to $1.1 billion into it.

For the birth of something new, there has to be a happening. Newton saw an apple fall; James Watt watched a kettle boil; Roentgen fogged some photographic plates. And these people knew enough to translate ordinary happenings into something new.

You can not plan to make a discovery. You do not plan innovation.

Chance... in the accommodation peculiar to sensorimotor intelligence, plays the same role as in scientific discovery. It is only useful to the genius and its revelations remain meaningless to the unskilled.

Sometimes serendipity is just intention unmasked.

It is true that my discovery of LSD was a chance discovery, but it was the outcome of planned experiments and these experiments took place in the framework of systematic pharmaceutical, chemical research. It could better be described as serendipity. That means that you look for something, you have a certain plan, and then you find something else, different, that may nevertheless be useful.

I had fallen in love with a young man... and we were planning to get married. And then he died of subacute bacterial endocarditis... Two years later with the advent of penicillin, he would have been saved. It reinforced in my mind the importance of scientific discovery...

It's like The Mold in Dr. Florey's Coat, about the discovery of penicillin. Out of these strange accidents come huge discoveries. A certain purple bleeds into red and all of a sudden you have something unexpected.

(The discovery of penicillin) was a triumph of accident, a fortunate occurrence which happened while I was working on a purely academic bacteriological problem.

You write a book and it's like putting a message in a bottle and throwing it in the ocean. You don't know if it will ever reach any shores. And there, you see, sometimes it falls in the hands of the right person.

In matters of observation chance favors only the prepared mind. (not literal translation) - Dan's les champs de observation le hasard ne favorise que les esprits prepares.

It is true that my discovery of LSD was a chance discovery, but it was the outcome of planned experiments and these experiments took place in the framework of systematic pharmaceutical, chemical research. It could better be described as serendipity.

I have been trying to point out that in our lives chance may have an astonishing influence and, if I may offer advice to the young laboratory worker, it would be this-never neglect an extraordinary appearance or happening. It may be-usually is, in fact-a false alarm that leads to nothing, but may on the other hand be the clue provided by fate to lead you to some important advance.

Particle physics suffers more from being infected by the socio-political mood of the day than from lack of spectacular opportunities for major and profound discoveries.

The man who is striving to solve a problem defined by existing knowledge and technique is not, however, just looking around. He knows what he wants to achieve, and he designs his instruments and directs his thoughts accordingly. Unanticipated novelty, the new discovery, can emerge only to the extent that his anticipations about nature and his instruments prove wrong... There is no other effective way in which discoveries might be generated.