A discovery is said to be an accident meeting a prepared mind.
Science has helped us to understand and master ourselves, creating an elevated new form of human life, the wealth and beauty of which cannot be pictured today by the keenest imagination.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote emphasizes how science has transformed our understanding of ourselves and our potential as humans.
The quote by Albert Szent-Gyorgyi reflects on the profound impact of science in enhancing our self-awareness and capabilities as human beings. It suggests that through scientific advancement, we have achieved a higher state of existence, one that is so rich and intricate that it surpasses what we can currently envision. The elevation of human life brought forth by science invites us to appreciate the potential for even greater developments in the future.
Themes
In practice
Example use cases
During a science fair, a student quoted Szent-Gyorgyi to highlight the importance of scientific inquiry in understanding ourselves better.
More from Albert Szent-Gyorgyi
All quotes →I called it ignose, not knowing which carbohydrate it was. This name was turned down by my editor. 'God-nose' was not more successful, so in the end 'hexuronic acid' was agreed upon. To-day the substance is called 'ascorbic acid' and I will use this name.
It is impossible to encircle the hips of a girl with my right arm and hold her smile in my left hand, then proceed to study the two items separately. Similarly, we can not separate life from living matter, in order to study only living matter and its reactions. Inevitably, studying living matter and its reactions, we study life itself
Water is life's matter and matrix, mother and medium. There is no life without water.
The real scientist is ready to bear privation and, if need be, starvation rather than let anyone dictate to him which direction his work must take.
Research is to see what everybody else has seen, and to think what nobody else has thought.
Similar quotes
The day that you stop looking - because you're content God did it - I don't need you in the lab. You're useless on the frontier of understanding the nature of the world.
Chimps can do all sorts of things we thought that only we could do - like tool-making and abstraction and generalisation. They can learn a language - sign language - and they can use the signs. But when you think of our intellects, even the brightest chimp looks like a very small child.
It felt—nearly twenty-five hundred years after Hippocrates had naively coined the overarching term karkinos—that modern oncology was hardly any more sophisticated in its taxonomy of cancer.
God is an ever-receding pocket of scientific ignorance that's getting smaller and smaller and smaller as time moves on.
The same things that lead to disparities in health in this country on a day-to-day basis led to disparities in the impact of Hurricane Katrina.
Before we start talking about genetic differences, you gotta come up with a system where there's equal opportunity.