Lawrence M. Krauss Quotes

There is an ever-widening gap between what science allows and what we should actually do. There are many doors science can open that should be kept closed, on prudential or ethical grounds.

Younger scientists are extremely sensitive to the moral implications of all they do.

There are lots of things that science will enable us to do that we shouldn’t do.

You do not settle whether an argument is justified by merely showing that it is of some use. The distinction is not between useful and useless experiments but between barbarous and civilized behaviour. Vivisection is a social evil because if it advances human knowledge, it does so at the expense of human character.

There's no question that as science, knowledge and technology advance, that we will attempt to do more significant things. And there's no question that we will always have to temper those things with ethics.

At the end of the day, if there are truly ethical considerations, those have to override scientific considerations.

There is not much that even the most socially responsible scientists can do as individuals, or even as a group, about the social consequences of their activities.

Science is not inherently good.

Many badly needed goals, like fusion and cancer cure, would be achieved much sooner if we invested more.

Novel technologies and ideas that impinge on human biology and their perceived impact on human values have renewed strains in the relationship between science and society.

When grand plans for scientific and defence technologies are made, do the people in power think about the sacrifices the people in the laboratories and fields have to make?

Technologists provide tools that can improve people's lives. But I want to be clear that I don't think technology by itself improves people's lives, since often I'm criticized for being too pro-technology. Unless there's commensurate ethical and moral improvements to go along with it, it's for naught.

The extent to which ethics leads or lags the scientific juggernaut will now be measured in the specific policy decisions our democratic political systems produce.

With so much power, science will inevitably receive strong criticism. It comes with success. It’s entirely appropriate. Take it as a complement. And get over it.

It is the great glory as well as the great threat of science that everything which is in principle possible can be done if the intention to do it is sufficiently resolute.

Science is a magnificent force, but it is not a teacher of morals. It can perfect machinery, but it adds no moral restraints to protect society from the misuse of the machine. It can also build gigantic intellectual ships, but it constructs no moral rudders for the control of storm tossed human vessel.

Science is a magnificent force, but it is not a teacher of morals. It can perfect machinery, but it adds no moral restraints to protect society from the misuse of the machine. It can also build gigantic intellectual ships, but it constructs no moral rudders for the control of storm tossed human vessel. It not only fails to supply the spiritual element needed but some of its unproven hypotheses rob the ship of its compass and thus endangers its cargo.

New technologies are often met with skepticism. But if the world is to continue the remarkable progress of the past few decades, it is vital that scientists, subject to safety and ethics guidelines, be encouraged to continue taking advantage of such promising tools as CRISPR.

Scientists are not delinquents. Our work has changed the conditions in which men live, but the use made of these changes is the problem of governments, not of scientists.

Do you trust in your fellow citizens, in a sense that whatever they will have in additional tools they will use in balance more to the good or more to the bad? If you think they will use it more to the bad, you shouldn't do science, you know.

Whatever science fiction movies we watch now, we can make the technology real in two days. What we can do is not important. What we should do is more important.

The problem isn't how to make the world more technological. It's about how to make the world more humane again.

The Human moral keyboard is limited ... there's nothing you can play on it that hasn't been played before. And, my dear Friends, I am sorry to say this, but it has its lower notes.

Vivisection is a social evil because if it advances human knowledge, it does so at the expense of human character.

Science and technology are what we can do; morality is what we agree we should or should not do.