John Gurdon Quotes

Whilst worthy in themselves, applications shouldn't be the only way to drive basic research.

True science is distinctively the study of useless things. For the useful things will get studied without the aid of scientific men. To employ these rare minds on such work is like running a steam engine by burning diamonds.

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

I'd like to put in a vote for the intrinsic fascination of science.

I loved science. I still love it; I'm a nerd in that sense.

Basic scientific research is scientific capital.

No matter how counter-intuitive it may seem, basic research has proven over and over to be the lifeline of practical advances in medicine.

I have always focused on basic research, motivated by a desire to understand the world.

I had then and still retain an interest in science for its own sake and as a metaphor for our current lives.

In 1995, I founded The Molecular Sciences Institute with a gift from the Philip Morris Company where I hoped that we could create an environment where young people could pursue science in an atmosphere of harmonious purpose and high intellectual challenge.

Frequently, I have been asked if an experiment I have planned is pure or applied research; to me, it is more important to know if the experiment will yield new and probably enduring knowledge about nature.

It is mistaken to claim that global problems will be solved more quickly if only researchers would abandon their quest to understand the universe and knuckle down to work on an agenda of public or political concerns. These are not 'either/or' options - indeed, there is a positive symbiosis between them.

Throughout history, people have studied pure science from a desire to understand the universe rather than practical applications for commercial gain. But their discoveries later turned out to have great practical benefits.

The currencies of science are discoveries and ideas; the rewards are the excitement of going where nobody has been before and, if one is inclined to such things, the kudos of peer acclaim, plus funds to do more research.

If I could snap my fingers and do one thing in science, I would get more funding for basic science. But the level of funding that needs to be done is not on the order of millions, like the cost of the Breakthrough Prizes. It's billions to tens of billions.

I am only conscious of any satisfaction in Scientific Reading or thinking when it rounds off into a poetical generality and vagueness.

I was interested in science before I even knew what science was.

The research I have been doing - studying how foodstuffs yield energy in living cells - does not lead to the kind of knowledge that can be expected to give immediate practical benefits to mankind. If I have chosen this field of study, it was because I believed in its importance in spite of its theoretical character.

It doesn't matter whether it is chemistry or immunology or neuroscience: I just do research on what I find interesting.

From my earliest days I had a passion for science.

despite its apparent impracticality, the Administration values discovery-oriented science, and aims to continue to support the grand quest for knowledge about the universe at the largest and smallest scales.

Researchers probably never anticipated when they started smashing atoms and protons in our large accelerators that their science their very basic research on matter would eventually give us remarkable life-saving technology.

If you sense a deep human need, then you go back to all the basic science. If there is some missing, then you try to do more basic science and applied science until you get it.

This is an appropriate role for the federal government - to invest in basic research.

I just try to stuff my brain with everything that I can read on what is going on in science at a very high level, and sometimes I see connections of what might need to be done.