Karl Taylor Compton Quotes

15 Sourced Quotes

Fundamentally, science means simply knowledge of our environment. Combined with ingenuity, science becomes power.

Karl Taylor Compton
For the benefit of society, as well as for the most efficient work of the engineer, it is essential that the engineer... be trained to think not only of his specific engineering projects, but also of their larger significance in the economic and social order.

Karl Taylor Compton
There is "something new under the sun" in that modern science has given mankind, for the first time in the history of the human race, a way of securing a more abundant life which does not simply consist in taking it away from someone else. Science really creates wealth and opportunity where they did not exist before.

Karl Taylor Compton
Applied science is not an end in itself, but it is the most powerful means ever discovered for supplying the opportunity to secure the finest things of life.

Karl Taylor Compton
I would emphasize the fact that scientific discovery is, per se, neither good nor bad. It simply produces knowledge and with knowledge, opportunity and responsibility. I think it fair to say that the advance of science carries with it powerful demands on morality if the results are to be beneficial rather than harmful.

Karl Taylor Compton
If the engineer is to bring his influence to bear on broad public questions he must approach them, not with technical arrogance, but with sympathetic understanding.

Karl Taylor Compton
In the last fifty years physics has exerted a more powerful beneficial influence on the intellectual, economic and social life of the world than has been exerted in a comparable time by any other agency in history. Its influence has far exceeded that of wars, political alignment or social theories.

Karl Taylor Compton
The question of engineering should be of interest not only to those of us who are engineers, but to the entire public which lives in an engineering world

Karl Taylor Compton
Engineering education is the sine qua non of this technical age. Unless it is effective and adequate our type of civilization cannot go forward. To be effective, it must be progressive, for engineering art is not static; it is very dynamic.

Karl Taylor Compton
In science, as in human affairs, great events do not occur without a background of development.

Karl Taylor Compton
Science has contributed to the making of religion into a developing dynamic spiritual force.

Karl Taylor Compton
The characteristic feature of our age results from the wedding of science and engineering. It is the working together of disciplined curiosity and purposeful ingenuity to create new materials, new forces, and new opportunities which powerfully affect our manner of living and ways of thinking.

Karl Taylor Compton
I believe that the advent of modern science is the most important social event in all history.

Karl Taylor Compton
The whole history of scientific progress illustrates the importance of free communication of ideas, of co-operative work at all levels, of adequate support and facilities, and above all, of high grade research workers and top-notch leadership.

Karl Taylor Compton
Science is not a technique or a body of knowledge, though it uses both. It is rather an attitude of inquiry, or observation and reasoning, with respect to the world. It can be developed, not by memorizing facts or juggling formulas to get an answer, but only by actual practice of scientific observation and reasoning.

Karl Taylor Compton