The self-fulfilling prophecy is, in the beginning, a false definition of the situation evoking a new behavior which makes the originally false concep…

- Robert K. Merton

The purely abstract theorist runs the risk that, as with modern decor, the furniture of the mind will be sparse, bare, and uncomfortable.

- Robert K. Merton

Anticipatory plagiarism occurs when someone steals your original idea and publishes it a hundred years before you were born.

- Robert K. Merton

Max Weber was right in subscribing to the view that one need not be Caesar in order to understand Caesar. But there is a temptation for us theoretica…

- Robert K. Merton

A cardinal American virtue, 'ambition,' promotes a cardinal American vice, 'deviant behavior.

- Robert K. Merton

Only when he has published his ideas and findings has the scientist made his contribution, and only when he has thus made it part of the public domai…

- Robert K. Merton

We thus begin to see that the institutionalized practice of citations and references in the sphere of learning is not a trivial matter. While many a …

- Robert K. Merton

Most institutions demand unqualified faith; but the institution of science makes skepticism a virtue.

- Robert K. Merton

Science is public, not private, knowledge.

- Robert K. Merton