Paul Nurse Quotes

Most scientific revelations happened after the pursuit of knowledge quit being secret and hermetic.

There is nothing more exciting than having a life devoted to fundamental knowledge and to contributing to advance the borders of knowledge.

The greater the step forward in knowledge, the greater is the one taken backward in search of wisdom.

School gives you the freedom to explore different philosophies, religions, aspects of yourself, and subjects.

The work I was involved in had no obvious therapeutic benefit. It was purely of scientific interest. I hope the country will continue to support basic research even though it may have no obvious practical value.

I love learning new things that will never be put to practical use.

The real community of man is the community of those who seek the truth, of the potential knowers.

Real education must ultimately be limited to men who insist on knowing, the rest is mere sheep-herding.

Upon the progress of knowledge the whole progress of the human race is immediately dependent: he who retards that, hinders this also.

If you're going to be an academic who's involved in the world of policy, you have to be involved in the world that exists.

In my lab, we are constantly asking, 'What's the utility of this pure science that we're doing? Let's nudge it a little bit in a direction where people can connect to it and have some fun and/or help some very serious problems they have.'

Honey is sweet, "and so is knowledge, but knowledge is like the bee that made that sweet honey, you have to chase it through the pages of a book." (taken from "Thank you, Mr. Falker" )

Science that leads over the horizon depends on gathering the best minds and enabling them to do what the best minds naturally seek to do: pursue the most thrilling questions of the time.

Learning isn't a means to an end; it is an end in itself.

Within the university... you can study without waiting for any efficient or immediate result. You may search, just for the sake of searching, and try for the sake of trying. So there is a possibility of what I would call playing. It's perhaps the only place within society where play is possible to such an extent.

The most glorious vision of the intellectual life is still that which is loosely called humanist: the idea of a mind committed yet dispassionate, ready to stand alone, curious, eager, skeptical. The banner of critical independence, ragged and torn though it may be, is still the best we have.

There is no knowledge and science like pondering and thought; and there is no prosperity and advancement like knowledge and science.

I confess that I have as vast contemplative ends, as I have moderate civil ends: for I have taken all knowledge to be my province.

I can only regard with bewilderment an educated man who is also religious

Knowledge is praised and desired by multitudes whom her charms could never rouse from the couch of sloth; whom the faintest invitation of pleasure draws away from their studies; to whom any other method of wearing the day is more eligible than the use of books, and who are more easily engaged by any conversation than such as may rectify their notions or enlarge their comprehension.

A man becomes a philosopher by reason of a certain perplexity, from which he seeks to free himself.

Being a professional philosopher is, I would say, feeling natural to think about small and great problems. It is the only pleasure.

Meek young men grow up in colleges and believe it is their duty to accept the views which books have given, and grow up slaves.

All of the top achievers I know are life-long learners. Looking for new skills, insights, and ideas. If they're not learning, they're not growing and not moving toward excellence.

Why should the government subsidize intellectual curiosity?