Skip to content

When order is achieved among human beings by allowing them to interact with each other on their own initiative — subject only to the laws which uniformly apply to all of them — we have a system of spontaneous order in society.

— Michael Polanyi The Logic of Liberty (1951)

Another quote →

More quotes by Michael Polanyi

No sincere assertion of fact is essentially unaccompanied by feelings of intellectual satisfaction or of a persuasive desire and a sense of personal responsibility.

Personal Knowledge (1958)

While the articulate contents of science are successfully taught all over the world in hundreds of universities, the unspecifiable art of scientific research has not yet penetrated to many of these.

Personal Knowledge (1958)

The correct reading of \vdash p written down by me in good faith is therefore 'I believe p', or some other words expressing the same fiduciary act.

Personal Knowledge (1958)

A declaratory sentence can be asserted, because it is an incomplete symbol, of indeterminate modality; while a question, a command, an invective, or any other sentence of fixed intention can no more be asserted than could my act of hewing wood or of drinking tea.

Personal Knowledge (1958)

The term 'simplicity' functions then merely as a disguise for another meaning than its own. It is used for smuggling an essential quality into our appreciation of a scientific theory, which a mistaken conception of objectivity forbids us to openly acknowledge.

Personal Knowledge (1958)

All Michael Polanyi quotes →

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Michael Polanyi (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.