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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

Evolution favors the survival of the wisest.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

The people - could you patent the sun ?

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

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

Are we being good ancestors?

I overcame the nightmares because of my dreams.

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

The art of science is as important as so-called technical science. You need both. It's this combination that must be recognized and acknowledged and valued.

I think of evolution as an error-making and error-correcting process, and we are constantly learning from experience.

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

A good parent gives their child roots and wings.

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.

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.

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

Hope lies in dreams, in imagination, and in the courage of those who dare to make dreams into reality.

What makes your heart leap?