Basic Research Quotes

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

All that we know is still infinitely less than all that still remains unknown.

Basic research is what I'm doing when I don't know what I'm doing.

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.

Government investment unlocks a huge amount of private sector activity, but the basic research that we put into IT work that led to the Internet and lots of great companies and jobs, the basic work we put into the health care sector, where it's over $30 billion a year in R&D that led the biotech and pharma jobs. And it creates jobs and it creates new technologies that will be productized. But the government has to prime the pump here. The basic ideas, as in those other industries, start with government investment.

Exploration, of course, is going to new places, but I don't think we go to new places just solely to say: "Well, we've been there," and come back, interesting though it may be. To me, each time we go farther into space we should use that to do basic research - basic research that can't be done before you go there.

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.

How much further beyond basic research the role of the government should be, you could have a really good debate about it. Almost nobody would say it's zero. But that's where at least we need the private sector to play a big role.

Basic research, performed for curiosity today, will drive the innovations years from now. When qunatum mecahnics was curioisty-driven basic research 80 years ago, no none had any inkling that there would be prectical cosequences of it. However today much more than half of entire gross nationa product was and is dependent on quantum mechanics. Cell phones, computers, and all the things we enjory were innovations that could not have taken place without an understanding of quantum mechanics.

Technological innovations [in public health] that come from basic science have to be transformed from discovery to delivery, and that gap is huge.

Government isn't that good at rapid advancement of technology. It tends to be better at funding basic research. To have things take off, you've got to have commercial companies do it.

Government support is not only investing in upstream areas like basic research, but also in downstream areas like applied research and early-stage financing for the companies themselves. This means there are great risks.

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.

Finally, assuming that many of those are fulfilled, which won't be easy in tight budget times, we're taking the supply side at the basic research level, because that's where government is absolutely fundamental.

Innovation is the key to the future, but basic research is the key to future innovation.

I do think actually in this case the government does get credit for funding some of the basic research.

Science will stagnate if it is made to serve practical goals.

Societies will, of course, wish to exercise prudence in deciding which technologies that is, which applications of science are to be pursued and which not. But without funding basic research, without supporting the acquisition of knowledge for its own sake, our options become dangerously limited.

I think people love fundamental science.

America needs the best education system in the world. We have it in higher education. We do not have it in general education for all of our people - the K-12 education. Other nations are far, far outdoing the United States in that area. We still have the lead in research, but once again, other nations are pouring more into research also. We still have a lead, but to me it's just very, very important that we keep that lead in basic research.

Invest in basic research and recruit the best minds.

Breakthroughs are by definition unpredicted events. Therefore predicting breakthroughs is a particularly difficult business.

It is folly to use as one's guide in the selection of fundamental science the criterion of utility. Not because (scientists)... despise utility. But because. .. useful outcomes are best identified after the making of discoveries, rather than before.

I support basic research, which can lead to discoveries that change our world, expand our horizons and save lives.

We benefited from an enlightened post-war period in the United States: Our National Institutes of Health have enthusiastically and generously supported basic research.