John C. Polanyi Quotes (2 Quotes)

(Concerning the allocation of research funds) 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.

Faced with the admitted difficulty of managing the creative process, we are doubling our efforts to do so. Is this because science has failed to deliver, having given us nothing more than nuclear power, penicillin, space travel, genetic engineering, transistors, and superconductors Or is it because governments everywhere regard as a reproach activities they cannot advantageously control They felt that way about the marketplace for goods, but trillions of wasted dollars later, they have come to recognize the efficiency of this self-regulating system. Not so, however, with the marketplace for ideas.