Research & Development Quotes

There is no known writing of Disraeli's with this quote although it is very commonly attributed to him as in this case by Mark Twain. Disraeli was even quoted earlier in 1895 by English Parliamentarian Leonard H. Courtney who said, “…the words of the Wise Statesman, "Lies— damned lies— and statistics," and although he does not mention Disraeli by name, the “Wise Statesman” was a name commonly used for the great prime minister and the timing was right. The two together make the quotation very probably attributable to Disraeli. See linked quote.

This quotation became the mantra of the MIT Media Lab's Professor Hugh Herr and others whose total efforts are spend inventing things for the future.

1st Baron Verulam. Inscribed above the figure of Philosophy in the Jefferson Building of the Library of Congress

This quotation illustrates the largest difference between politicians and scientists. Politicians are always seeking data and confirmation that their ideologies and theories are right. Scientists are always trying to prove the status quo wrong as this is the only way to increase knowledge. Newton showed that the Greeks were wrong and could not explain all of mechanics. Einstein proved that Newton was not quite right. The quantum mechanics scientists showed Einstein was not quote right with small particles and the Hicks Boson found a hole in quantum mechanics. This is progress in science—finding previous error or incompleteness.

Germany had some world class physicists. Our scientists, military intelligence people, and political leadership assumed that the Germans were also seeking to develop the Atomic Bomb. Ironically, it turned out that they were not, and what Truman reported in this quotation was untrue (although that was not fully known at the time.) Einstein and several of the scientists who were early pioneers in modern physics were Jewish, and Hitler referred to the study of nuclear fission and fusion as “Jewish Science.” As a result, the German government did not commit the resources to the development of an atomic bomb. Instead, they were betting on the development of the Jet Airplane which they succeeded in deploying against the Allies at the end of the war. But they did not have enough or enough pilots left alive to fly them, and Germany was overrun by the Allied Troops. Prior to Truman’s erroneous report about the German development of an atomic bomb, there had only been one piece of evidence that the Germans were not developing one. An OSS secret agent, Moe Berg, had talked with Werner Heisenberg, at a Swiss scientific conference during the war. He was going to assassinate the greatest of the German physicists if Berg thought he was working on a nuclear device. Berg concluded from his discussions that Heisenberg did not know enough about nuclear fission to have been working on that. Berg did not kill Heisenberg, and reported that he did not think the Germans were developing a bomb as if they were Heisenberg would have been deeply involved. However, the American intelligence people and the American scientists, did not trust Berg’s analysis and conclusion. Berg was not a trained scientist. He was a professional baseball player—the NY Yankee backup catcher to Bill Dickey. He was a college graduate, a brilliant guy and a very fast learner who had studied physics books and papers before his assignment. Berg turned out to have been right, but that was not confirmed until a few years after the war. Truman had relied on an incorrect intelligence estimate when he made this quotation. It was not the first such error of intelligence analysis in American history and it would not be the last.

Second to Benjamin Franklin, Rush was the only other real scientist of the American colonial era.

Borden invented some of the basic methods of preserving food and assuring uncontaminated food—especially with dairy products.

Under this initiative the US declassified and distributed technical, previously secret information, about atomic science to the world for scientific development. It has been very successful and there are few modern nations that have not benefitted from the program.

I chose to invest in railroads rather than airlines. More than 100 airlines have gone bankrupt in the last 25 years.

More and more scientific researchers and technologists were using research tools that they did not fully understand and sometimes did not understand at all.

By “arts” Jefferson meant the mechanical arts—inventions and engineering. Jefferson Extrapolated the science and technology progress at the time to the future in a way that few others did at that time.