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"I certainly saw science as a kind of calling, and one with as much legitimacy as a religious calling."
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"There is no strife, no prejudice, no national conflict in outer space as yet. Its hazards are hostile to us all. Its conquest deserves the best of all mankind, and its opportunity for peaceful cooperation many never come again. But why, some say, the moon? Why choose this as our goal? And they may well ask why climb the highest mountain? Why, 35 years ago, fly the Atlantic? Why does Rice play Texa...s? We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too."
"As far as the laws of Mathematics refer to reality they are not certain and as far as they are certain they do not refer to reality."
"If you wish to learn from the theoretical physicist anything about the methods which he uses, I would give you the following piece of advice: Don't listen to his words, examine his achievements. For to the discoverer in that field, the constructions of his imagination appear so necessary and so natural that he is apt to treat them not as the creations of his thoughts but as given realities."
"Science is simply the classification of the common knowledge of the common people. It is bringing together the things we all know and putting them together so we can use them. This is creation and finds its analogy in Nature, where the elements are combined in certain ways to give us fruits or flowers or grain."
"Man has to awaken to wonder - and so perhaps do peoples. Science is a way of sending him to sleep again."
"It stands to the everlasting credit of science that by acting on the human mind it has overcome man's insecurity before himself and before nature."
"I believe in intuition and inspiration. Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited, whereas imagination embraces the entire world, stimulating progress, giving birth to evolution. It is, strictly speaking, a real factor in scientific research."
"Indeed, I would feel that an appreciation of the arts in a conscious, disciplined way might help one to do science better."
Explore more quotes by Joshua Lederberg
"I was making a lot of momentous personal decisions. I was still very very young: when the prize was awarded, I was 33; the work I had done when I was 21."
"I started on the use of the Internet for scientific communication. Our research group was one of the very first to make really systematic use of it as a way of managing research projects."
"Although I am a public figure, I'm still a little shy. I don't think my own personality is important. I prefer to keep some small dosage of privacy."
"If you want to solve very complex problems, you will have to end up letting machines work out a lot of the details for themselves, and in ways that we don't understand what they are doing."
"Being successful at a very young age gave me the confidence and the capability to try out other things."
"To have the recognition of your colleagues is great. The public attention is a mixed blessing."
"So many of the things I've predicted were technologies that were just sitting right in front of us."
"If it takes you 20 or 25 years to establish yourself in one field, you really ought to be careful not to stray too far."
"Try hard to find out what you're good at and what your passions are, and where the two converge, and build your life around that."
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