Thomas R. Cech Quotes

I recognized that teaching and research institutions vitally depend on the involvement of active scientists also in management functions.

American science is much more organized, much more hierarchical than British science has been.

When I was the NIH director, I often expressed envy of institute directors: they had the money and ran the scientific programmes.

The State of Israel must be at the forefront of global science - in physics, in mathematics, in medicine, in biology.

It's been an enormous privilege to be the government chief scientific adviser.

I believe that science is best left to scientists, that you cannot have managers or directors of science, it's got to be carried out and done by people with ideas, people with concepts, people who feel in their bones that they want to go ahead and develop this, that, or the other concept which occurs to them.

Penn State is a leader in food science.

The partisanship surrounding space exploration and the retrenching of U.S. space policy are part of a more general trend: the decline of science in the United States. As its interest in science wanes, the country loses ground to the rest of the industrialized world in every measure of technological proficiency.

I started on the use of the Internet for scientific communication. Our research group was one of the very first to make really systematic use of it as a way of managing research projects.

The U.S. can still maintain research institutions, such as Caltech, that are the envy of the world, yet it would be hubristic and naive to think that this position is sustainable without investing in science education and basic research.

I don't think it would be a good idea for scientists to have more political power. Scientists as a group are more inclined to try to derive an ought from an is, than the population at large.

It's time to let science and medicine, not politics and rhetoric, lead us to good, sound policy.

The big journals and Nobel laureates are the equivalent of Congressional leaders in science journalism.

NASA works for the White House. There are many at NASA that wish they were building a modern replacement for the Shuttle. However, they had marching orders to instead work on other things, some of which should have no place in a research organization.

I am not a scientist. I have never analyzed the far reaches of the solar system through the lens of a telescope nor scrutinized cancer cells under a microscope.

I don't know how you overcome the dearth of scientists in the government positions.

The AEC had at its command an army of highly skilled scientists.

Postwar U.S. was the world's leader in science and technology. The investment in science research was staggering.

In 1998, I set up and directed a research group at the Nanotechnology Institute newly created in the Research Center of Karlsruhe. This allowed to offer to former post-doctoral coworkers the opportunity to develop and to progressively set up independent research activities in nanoscience and nanotechnology.

The Department of Cell Biology at Johns Hopkins was founded and directed by Tom Pollard, an engaging young scientist with remarkable energy and enthusiasm.

I think the reason people are dealing with science less well now than 50 years ago is that it has become so complicated.

To be sure, the vast majority of people who are untrained can accept the results of science only on authority.

After forty years in the lab, I was asked in 1991 to become president of The Rockefeller University. Unlike a working scientist, being president for seven years provided an opportunity to interact with scientists in many different fields and broadened my scope of the natural sciences.

If there is any conflict between Congress and science, Congress will win. Congress is paying the bills.

Whenever you involve scientists with politicians there is a struggle.