Sir Peter Medawar quotes

" The human mind treats a new idea the way the body treats a strange protein; it rejects it. " # Ideas # Mind # Body

" Ahhh. A man with a sharp wit. Someone ought to take it away from him before he cuts himself. " # Wit

" Today the world changes so quickly that in growing up we take leave not just of youth but of the world we were young in. Fear and resentment of what is new is really a lament for the memories of our childhood. " # Change # Youth # Age and Aging

" Scientists are entitled to be proud of their accomplishments, and what accomplishments can they call 'theirs' except the things they have done or thought of first? People who criticize scientists for wanting to enjoy the satisfaction of intellectual ownership are confusing possessiveness with pride of possession. Meanness, secretiveness and, sharp practice are as much despised by scientists as by other decent people in the world of ordinary everyday affairs; nor, in my experience, is generosity less common among them, or less highly esteemed. " # Science and Scientists # Critics and Criticism # Pride

" Considered in its entirety, psychoanalysis won't do. It's an end product, moreover, like a dinosaur or a zeppelin; no better theory can ever be erected on its ruins, which will remain for ever one of the saddest and strangest of all landmarks in the history of twentieth-century thought. " # Psychoanalysis # Love Ended # Life and Living

" If politics is the art of the possible, research is surely the art of the soluble. Both are immensely practical-minded affairs. " # Research # Politicians and Politics # Arts and Artists

" We cannot point to a single definitive solution of any one of the problems that confront us — political, economic, social or moral, that is, having to do with the conduct of life. We are still beginners, and for that reason may hope to improve. To deride the hope of progress is the ultimate fatuity, the last word in poverty of spirit and meanness of mind. There is no need to be dismayed by the fact that we cannot yet envisage a definitive solution of our problems, a resting-place beyond which we need not try to go. " # Writers and Writing # Politicians and Politics # Love

" Simultaneous discovery is utterly commonplace, and it was only the rarity of scientists, not the inherent improbability of the phenomenon, that made it remarkable in the past. Scientists on the same road may be expected to arrive at the same destination, often not far apart. " # Science and Scientists # Goals # Past

" A scientist is no more a collector and classifier of facts than a historian is a man who complies and classifies a chronology of the dates of great battles and major discoveries. " # Science and Scientists # History and Historians # Dating

" Creosote has a pretty technological smell. " # Technology