Laurence McKinley Gould

"Some came for sheer love of adventure and wanted no reward beyond that; some wanted fame or its counterfeit, publicity; some were mercenary and thought primarily in terms of what they were going to get out of it; and lastly there was that small group, the like of which gives character to any expedition of merit — not necessarily scientists at all, but men who could understand the lure, if not the love, of knowledge for its own sake; men who came not for position or money but who found full reward for their effort in the pursuit of an ideal."

"I do not believe the greatest threat to our future is from bombs or guided missiles. I don’t think our civilization will die that way. I think it will die when we no longer care — when the spiritual forces that make us wish to be right and noble die in the hearts of men. Arnold Toynbee has pointed out that 19 or 21 notable civilizations have died from within and not by conquest from without. There were no bands playing and no flags waving when these civilizations decayed; it happened slowly, in the quiet and the dark when no one was aware. ... "If America is to grow great, we must stop gagging at the word spiritual!" Our task is to rediscover and reassert our faith in the spiritual, nonutilitarian values on which American life has really rested from its beginning."

"Science is not a form of black magic. A thousand blind alleys must often be explored before a right road is found; a thousand amateurs must have their fling before a Darwin or an Einstein comes along."

"I dislike hearing people talk about the scientific method. Science is simply the art of understanding nature, including man, of course, using all rational methods. There are a thousand scientific methods, and their only common thread is that they are all rational."