Scientists and scholars should constitute themselves as an international NGO of exceptional authority.

For scholarship - if it is to be scholarship - requires, in addition to liberty, that the truth take precedence over all sectarian interests, including self-interest.

Others think it the responsibility of scientists to coerce the rest of society, because they have the power that derives from special knowledge.

The scientific and scholarly community is marked by the belief that the truth is to be found in all; none can claim it as their monopoly.

The applause is a celebration not only of the actors but also of the audience. It constitutes a shared moment of delight.

It is this, at its most basic, that makes science a humane pursuit; it acknowledges the commonality of people's experience.

The most exciting thing in the twentieth century is science.

Science gives us a powerful vocabulary, and it is impossible to produce a vocabulary with which one can only say nice things.

Individual scientists like myself - and many more conspicuous - pointed to the dangers of radioactive fallout over Canada if we were to launch nuclear weapons to intercept incoming bombers.

Instead, in the absence of respect for human rights, science and its offspring technology have been used in this century as brutal instruments for oppression.

Some dreamers demand that scientists only discover things that can be used for good.

The respect for human rights, essential if we are to use technology wisely, is not something alien that must be grafted onto science. On the contrary, it is integral to science, as also to scholarship in general.

The eye searches for shapes. It searches for a beginning, a middle, and an end.

For science must breathe the oxygen of freedom.

Our assessment of socio-economic worth is largely a sham. We scientists should not lend ourselves to it - though we routinely do. We should, instead, insist on applying the criterion of quality.

Human dignity is better served by embracing knowledge.

Today, Academies of Science use their influence around the world in support of human rights.

Science exists, moreover, only as a journey toward troth. Stifle dissent and you end that journey.

Under this scientific and moral pressure, the Canadian government conceded publicly that the use of these weapons in Vietnam was, in their view, a contravention of the Geneva Protocol.

If we treasure our own experience and regard it as real, we must also treasure other people's experience.

Scientia is knowledge. It is only in the popular mind that it is equated with facts.

In nation after nation, democracy has taken the place of autocracy.

The time has come to underscore the fact that our and others' rights are contingent on our willingness to assert and defend them.

What makes the Universal Declaration an epochal document is first of all its global impetus and secondly the breadth of its claims, a commitment to a new social contract, binding on all the Governments of the world.

Young people ask me if this country is serious about science. They aren't thinking about the passport that they will hold, but the country that they must rely on for support and encouragement.

Though we explore in a culturally-conditioned way, the reality we sketch is universal.

Scientists and scholars should constitute themselves as an international NGO of exceptional authority.

When, as we must often do, we fear science, we really fear ourselves.

Better to die in the pursuit of civilized values, we believed, than in a flight underground. We were offering a value system couched in the language of science.

A new sense of shared international responsibility is unmistakable in the voices of the United Nations and its agencies, and in the civil society of thousands of supra-national NGOs.

Though neglectful of their responsibility to protect science, scientists are increasingly aware of their responsibility to society.

In the late 1950s a major topic under discussion was whether Canada should acquire nuclear weapons.

Science never gives up searching for truth, since it never claims to have achieved it.

Science is an enterprise that can only flourish if it puts the truth ahead of nationality ethnicity class and color.

Idealism is the highest form of reason.

The burnt odor in Washington is from the disintegrating authority of the governing classes.

If you look to lead, invest at least 40% of your time managing yourself - your ethics, character, principles, purpose, motivation, and conduct. Invest at least 30% managing those with authority over you, and 15% managing your peers.

All wars come to an end, at least temporarily. But the authority acquired by the state hangs on; political power never abdicates.

Anyone who conducts an argument by appealing to authority is not using his intelligence; he is just using his memory.

I call religion a natural authority, but it has usually been conceived as a supernatural authority.

But in our age the appeal to authority is weak, and I am of my age.

And revolutions always mean the breakdown of old authority.

In revolutions authority remains with the greatest scoundrels.

We all agree that we've got to bring these terrorists to justice and to make sure that they're never allowed to perpetrate such an evil act as they did. And so all of us are dealing with that. We know that the President has the authority to go to war under the War Powers Act.

The faith that stands on authority is not faith.

As a result of my study, I came to the conclusion that a common supreme authority was undesirable.

Universal suffrage should rest upon universal education. To this end, liberal and permanent provision should be made for the support of free schools by the State governments, and, if need be, supplemented by legitimate aid from national authority.

The dead and past stories that I have told again in divers fashions, are not set down without authority.

I had learned many years ago in private business never to take responsibility without adequate authority; and the new Secretary of Defense, as budgets were sharply cut, quickly found that out.