Jonas Salk Quotes

I overcame the nightmares because of my dreams.

A wisdom deficit - fewer elders and even fewer people who listen to them.

When you inoculate children with a polio vaccine, you don't sleep well for two or three months.

I do what I feel impelled to do, as an artist would. Scientists function in the same way. I see all these as creative activities, as all part of the process of discovery. Perhaps that's one of the characteristics of what I call the evolvers, any subset of the population who keep things moving in a positive, creative, constructive way, revealing the truth and beauty that exists in life and in nature.

Good parents give their children Roots and Wings. Roots to know where home is, wings to fly away and exercise what's been taught them.

What people think of as the moment of discovery is really the discovery of the question.

Reply when questioned on the safety of the polio vaccine he developed: It is safe, and you can't get safer than safe.

What you see in living systems, and in genetic systems, is that the genes are already there, having arisen in the course of time, and when they are needed they become activated. If they had to be invented, the time would be too late.

Your dreams tell you what to do; your reason tells you how to do it.

I couldn't possibly have become a member of this Institute, you know, if I hadn't organized it myself.

If all insects disappeared, all life on earth would perish. If all humans disappeared, all life on earth would flourish.

When things get bad enough, then something happens to correct the course. And it's for that reason that I speak about evolution as an error-making and an error-correcting process. And if we can be ever so much better - ever so much slightly better - at error correcting than at error making, then we'll make it.

I have had dreams and I have had nightmares, but I have conquered my nightmares because of my dreams.

Evolution favors the survival of the wisest.

Nothing happens quite by chance. It's a question of accretion of information and experience.

I look upon ourselves as partners in all of this, and that each of us contributes and does what he can do best. And so I see not a top rung and a bottom rung - I see all this horizontally - and I see this as part of a matrix. And I see every human being as having a purpose, a destiny, if you like - the destiny that exists in each of us - and find ways and means to provide such opportunities for everyone.

Are we being good ancestors?

A good parent gives their child roots and wings.

Risks, I like to say, always pay off. You learn what to do, or what not to do.

In my view, art and the approach to life through art, using it as a vehicle for education and even for doing science is so vital that it is part of a great new revolution that is taking place. I believe we are entering a whole new epoch.

Eventually we'll realize that if we destroy the ecosystem, we destroy ourselves.

As a child I was not interested in science. I was merely interested in things human, the human side of nature, if you like, and I continue to be interested in that. That's what motivates me.

The most important question we must ask ourselves is, 'Are we being good ancestors?'

You can have a team of unconventional thinkers, as well as conventional thinkers. If you don't have the support of others you cannot achieve anything altogether on your own. It's like a cry in the wilderness. In each instance there were others who could see the same thing, and there were others who could not. It's an obvious difference we see in those who you might say have a bird's eye view, and those who have a worm's eye view. I've come to realize that we all have a different mind set, we all see things differently, and that's what the human condition is really all about.

Find the right questions. You don't invent the answers, you reveal the answers.

Life is an error-making and an error-correctin g process, and nature in marking man's papers will grade him for wisdom as measured both by survival and by the quality of life of those who survive.

It is courage based on confidence, not daring, and it is confidence based on experience.

This is perhaps the most beautiful time in human history; it is really pregnant with all kinds of creative possibilities made possible by science and technology which now constitute the slave of man - if man is not enslaved by it.

There is hope in dreams, imagination, and in the courage of those who wish to make those dreams a reality.

It is always with excitement that I wake up in the morning wondering what my intuition will toss up to me, like gifts from the sea. I work with it and rely on it. It's my partner.

When I worked on the polio vaccine, I had a theory. I guided each [experiment] by imagining myself in the phenomenon in which I was interested. The intuitive realm . . . the realm of the imagination guides my thinking.

My ambition was to bring to bear on medicine a chemical approach. I did that by chemical manipulation of viruses and chemical ways of thinking in biomedical research.

The worst tragedy that could have befallen me was my success. I knew right away that I was through - cast out.

If humankind would accept and acknowledge this responsibility and become creatively engaged in the process of evolution, consciously as well as unconsciously, a new reality would emerge, and a new age could be born.

I have the impression that the new generation of young people, are coming up on the scene with a sense "ancestorhood", and with more wisdom than was evident before.

[Who owns the patent on this vaccine?] Well, the people, I would say. There is no patent. Could you patent the sun?

It is said to await certainty is to await eternity.

I feel that the greatest reward for doing is the opportunity to do more.

What is … important is that we — number one: Learn to live with each other. Number two: try to bring out the best in each other. The best from the best, and the best from those who, perhaps, might not have the same endowment. And so this bespeaks an entirely different philosophy — a different way of life — a different kind of relationship — where the object is not to put down the other, but to raise up the other.

My life is pretty well at peace, and the profession is more of an avocation. It's a calling, if you like, rather than a job. I do what I feel impelled to do, as an artist would.

There is a moment of conception and a moment of birth, but between them there is a long period of gestation.

It is possible to create an epidemic of health which is self-organizing and self-propelling.

Now, some people might look at something and let it go by, because they don't recognize the pattern and the significance. It's the sensitivity to pattern recognition that seems to me to be of great importance. It's a matter of being able to find meaning, whether it's positive or negative, in whatever you encounter. It's like a journey. It's like finding the paths that will allow you to go forward, or that path that has a block that tells you to start over again or do something else.

Intuition will tell the thinking mind where to look next.

What is ... important is that we - number one: Learn to live with each other. Number two: try to bring out the best in each other.

One of the greatest rewards for doing can be the chances it gives to do some more - even better.

I think of the need for more wisdom in the world, to deal with the knowledge that we have. At one time we had wisdom, but little knowledge. Now we have a great deal of knowledge, but do we have enough wisdom to deal with that knowledge?

Our greatest responsibility is to be good ancestors.