John Warner Quotes

For science must breathe the oxygen of freedom.

No government has the right to decide on the truth of scientific principles, nor to prescribe in any way the character of the questions investigated…. it has a duty to its citizens to maintain the freedom, to let those citizens contribute to the further adventure and the development of the human race

Once you have an innovation culture, even those who are not scientists or engineers - poets, actors, journalists - they, as communities, embrace the meaning of what it is to be scientifically literate. They embrace the concept of an innovation culture. They vote in ways that promote it. They don't fight science and they don't fight technology.

Speaking as just simply an American who cares about the economic health of our country, I see one of the surest ways to bring wealth and prosperity to the country is to innovate in science and technology.

Science is the tool of the Western mind and with it more doors can be opened than with bare hands.

Work of intellectual daring carries the danger of increased error, in both frequency and consequence.... Intrusive regulation by nonscientists is most frightening for this reason: innovation and chanciness will die.

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

There is no question but … science is the weakest in the lands of Islam. The dangers of this weakness cannot be overemphasized since honorable survival of a society depends directly on strength in science and technology …

In all modern history, interference with science in the supposed interest of religion, no matter how conscientious such interference may have been, has resulted in the direst evils both to religion and science

… post-industrial society

At the present time, when railways, the telegraph, the telephone, to say nothing of other inventions and improvements of importance, have simplified communication between all lands and nations to the last degree, there is scarcely any reason to fear either distance or the estrangement of the several parts of a single whole. Practically distance is almost nonexistent. What to our ancestors appeared simply near at hand now seems to lie immediately before our eyes

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.

Congress commissioned the first telegraph line, the railroads, the Internet. The role of the government in developing new technology is often misunderstood.

The emergence of modern science as a major new frontier of advancement that would lead, on one hand, to the discovery of new secrets of the universe, the invention of means to harness those secrets and the powers they represented, and the means to improve human health and allow humans to survive to both undertake that work and to enjoy its fruits.

The advancement of the arts (technology) from year to year taxes our credulity, and seems to presage the arrival of that period when human improvement must end.

Technological innovation is so miserable in the Middle East that, if you exclude Israel, the number of patents filed is less than one fifth the number from sub-Saharan Africa.

When I contemplate the immense advances in sciences and discoveries in the arts which have been made within the period of my life, I look forward with confidence to equal advances by the present generation, and have no doubt they will consequently be as much wiser than we have been as we than our fathers were, and they than the burners of witches

All around us are the consequences of the most significant technological, and hence cultural, revolution in generations

The ... progress of improvement and discovery ought not to be overlooked. ... Philosophy already directs her finger at sources of inexhaustible power. ... We are on the eve of mechanical discoveries still greater than any which have yet appeared.

If we have learned anything at all in this century, it is that all new technologies will be put to use, sooner or later, for better or worse, as it is in our nature to do.

With 5% of the world’s population, the United States employs about a third of all the research and development workers in the world.

Humanity also needs dreamers, for whom the disinterested development of an enterprise is so captivating that it becomes impossible for them to devote their care to their own material profit. A well-organized society should assure to such workers the efficient means of accomplishing their task, in a life freed from material care and freely consecrated to research.

I believe in limited government. I believe that government should be limited in many ways, …. No government has the right to decide on the truth of scientific principles, nor to prescribe in any way the character of the questions investigated. Neither may a government determine the aesthetic value of artistic creations, nor limit the forms of literacy or artistic expression. Nor should it pronounce on the validity of economic, historic, religious, or philosophical doctrines. Instead it has a duty to its citizens to maintain the freedom, to let those citizens contribute to the further adventure and the development of the human race

In the enfranchised mind of the scientific naturalist, the usual feelings of repugnance simply do not exist. Curiosity conquers prejudice.

Science requires much more than money and projects. Science requires freedom: freedom to enquire, to challenge, to think, and to envision the unimagined. We must be able to question convention and arbitrate our disputes by the rules of evidence. It is the content of scientific work that matters, not the persons who produced it, regardless of the color of their skin, the god they choose to worship, the ethnic group they were born into, or their gender. These are the values of science, but even more, they are societal values worth defending, not just to promote the pursuit of science but to have a better and more humane society.