Peter Medawar: Making

Peter Medawar was scientist. Explore interesting quotes on making.

Peter Medawar: 80 quotes0 likes

“If a person a) is poorly, b) receives treatment intended to make him better, and c) gets better, no power of reasoning known to medical science can convince him that it may not have been the treatment that restored his health.”

Source: 1960s, The Art of the Soluble, 1967, p. 14.

“Watson's childlike vision makes them seem like the creatures of a Wonderland, all at a strange contentious noisy tea-party which made room for him because for people like him, at this particular kind of party, there is always room.”

1960s, Lucky Jim, 1968

“It would have been a great disappointment to me if Vibration did not somewhere make itself felt, for all scientistic mystics either vibrate in person or find themselves resonant with cosmic vibrations; but I am happy to say that on page 266 Teilhard will be found to do so.”

1960s, Review of Teilhard de Chardin's "The Phenomenon of Man", 1961

“In no sense other than an utterly trivial one is reproduction the inverse of chemical disintegration. It is a misunderstanding of genetics to suppose that reproduction is only 'intended' to make facsimiles, for parasexual processes of genetical exchange are to be found in the simplest living things.”

1960s, Review of Teilhard de Chardin's "The Phenomenon of Man", 1961

“When asked to make the formal declaration that I did not intend to overthrow the Constitution of the United States, I was fool enough to reply that I had no such purpose, but that were I to do it by mistake I should be inexpressibly contrite.”

Source: 1980s, P. B. Medawar (1986), Memoir of a thinking radish: an autobiography, Oxford University Press, p. 117.

“The bells which toll for mankind are—most of them, anyway—like the bells of Alpine cattle; they are attached to our own necks, and it must be our fault if they do not make a cheerful and harmonious sound.”

The Future of Man, 1959
1950s