“The most important, the most fundamental and the deepest investigations are those that affect human life and activities most profoundly. Only those scientists who have laboured, not with the aim of producing this or that, but with the sole desire to advance knowledge ultimately prove to be the greatest benefactors of humanity.”
[Raman, C. V., Chandralekha, Why the Sky is Blue: Dr. C.V. Raman Talks about Science, http://books.google.com/books?id=LOC3vbnTgHYC&pg=PT1, 2010, Tulika Books, 978-81-8146-846-8, 17]
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C. V. Raman 20
Indian physicist 1888–1970Related quotes
“The most advanced nations are always those who navigate the most.”
1870s, Society and Solitude (1870), Civilization
A Vindication of Natural Society (1756)
Context: The most obvious division of society is into rich and poor; and it is no less obvious, that the number of the former bear a great disproportion to those of the latter. The whole business of the poor is to administer to the idleness, folly, and luxury of the rich; and that of the rich, in return, is to find the best methods of confirming the slavery and increasing the burdens of the poor. In a state of nature, it is an invariable law, that a man's acquisitions are in proportion to his labours. In a state of artificial society, it is a law as constant and as invariable, that those who labour most enjoy the fewest things; and that those who labour not at all have the greatest number of enjoyments. A constitution of things this, strange and ridiculous beyond expression! We scarce believe a thing when we are told it, which we actually see before our eyes every day without being in the least surprised.
"Preface to Poems" (1853)
Context: What actions are the most excellent? Those, certainly, which most powerfully appeal to the great primary human affections: to those elementary feelings which subsist permanently in the race, and which are independent of time. These feelings are permanent and the same; that which interests them is permanent and the same also.
“[…] knowledge is our greatest wealth and the love of others the most beautiful human value.”
French: [...] la connaissance est notre plus grande richesse et l'amour d'autrui la plus belle valeur humaine.
Source, in French: Jacques Dubochet, Parcours, Éditions Rosso, 2018, page 9 (ISBN 9782940560097).
Source: Patriotism and Christianity http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Patriotism_and_Christianity (1896), Ch. 17
Context: No feats of heroism are needed to achieve the greatest and most important changes in the existence of humanity; neither the armament of millions of soldiers, nor the construction of new roads and machines, nor the arrangement of exhibitions, nor the organization of workmen's unions, nor revolutions, nor barricades, nor explosions, nor the perfection of aerial navigation; but a change in public opinion.
And to accomplish this change no exertions of the mind are needed, nor the refutation of anything in existence, nor the invention of any extraordinary novelty; it is only needful that we should not succumb to the erroneous, already defunct, public opinion of the past, which governments have induced artificially; it is only needful that each individual should say what he really feels or thinks, or at least that he should not say what he does not think.
