Jonas Salk Quotes

If all the insects were to disappear from the earth, within 50 years all life on earth would end. If all human beings disappeared from the earth, within 50 years all forms of life would flourish.

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

I see the triumph of good over evil as a manifestation of the error-correcting process of evolution.

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

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

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?

Solutions come through evolution. They come through asking the right questions, because the answers pre-exist. It is the questions that we must define and discover. You don't invent the answer-you reveal the answer.

There is no such thing as failure, there's just giving up too soon.

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

We were told in one lecture that it was possible to immunize against diphtheria and tetanus by the use of chemically treated toxins, or toxoids. And the following lecture, we were told that for immunization against a virus disease, you have to experience the infection, and that you could not induce immunity with the so-called "killed" or inactivated, chemically treated virus preparation. Well, somehow, that struck me. What struck me was that both statements couldn't be true. And I asked why this was so, and the answer that was given was in a sense, 'Because.' There was no satisfactory answer.

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.

Life is an error-making and an error-correcting process.

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

The mind, in addition to medicine, has powers to turn the immune system around.

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.

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

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

Our greatest responsibility is to be good ancestors.

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

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

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

Intuition will tell the thinking mind where to look next.

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

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.

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

Evolution favors the survival of the wisest.

It is said to await certainty is to await eternity.

My job is to help people see what I see. If it's of value, fine. And, if it's not of value, then at least I've done what I can do.

I pictured myself as a virus or a cancer cell and tried to sense what it would be like.

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.

Wisdom: It's something that you know when you see it. You can recognize it, you can experience it. I have defined wisdom as the capacity to make judgments that when looked back upon will seem to have been wise.

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.

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.

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.

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 people - could you patent the sun ?

Charlotte's Web Life is magic, the way nature works seems to be quite magical.

I have come to recognize evolution not only as an active process that I am experiencing at the time, but as something I can guide by the choices I make.

I'm saying that we should trust our intuition. I believe that the principles of universal evolution are revealed to us through intuition. And I think that if we combine our intuition and our reason, we can respond in an evolutionary sound way to our problems.

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.

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.

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

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