1. Considering the fact that he has been at it for only a few thousand years, man makes rather good textiles.

2. He even is able to make acceptable textile fibers.

3. Compared to nature, however, he is still an amateur with much to learn.

Bush, Vannevar. The Essential Writings of Vannevar Bush (p. 47). Columbia University Press. Kindle Edition.

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the grass of the fields presents me with more alluring gradations of greens and browns than I find in neckties.

Moreover, the grass takes on more and more attractive hues after long exposure to the sun and rain, and neckties do not.

The world in which we live is going to change, politically and sociologically no doubt, but also technically.

We have no choice as to whether we will change with it, we simply have a choice as to whether we will change rapidly enough and sanely enough to remain part of the essential scheme of things, or whether we will pass out of the picture.

1. There are quite a few thousand men in the world capable of constructive thinking.

2. If we cannot beat a silkworm, I am ashamed of the human race.

1. The prime essential to an intelligent research program is not, however, apparatus or funds or young research workers;

2. it is ? a mature research director with a thorough knowledge of his field, a standing in his profession, a vision of possibilities, a courage to attack the unknown, a patience that is inexhaustible,

3. and a kindly humanity that will cause his co-workers to rally about him with enthusiasm.

4. Find such a man, and the rest of the research laboratory and program will appear.

5. Such men are scarce, and they come high.

6. It is my reasoned opinion, however, that no comprehensive research program can be successful in the long run, except by sheer luck, unless it is centered about such an individual.

1. There are more of these research directors about than might be suspected offhand.

2. For a life of research is exceedingly attractive to the youngster of inquiring mind; they have simply not as yet been discovered.

3. My advice then to the textile or other executive who?s considering the launching of a research project is to seek out a[n Eli] Whitney or a [Frank] Jewett of about age 30, be very sure you have the right man and then keep him entirely happy.

4. The results may come slowly, and the more comprehensive is a research, the slower it will come to fruition, but [results] will come nevertheless and they can be as far-reaching in their effect as is necessary to keep an organization busy for a generation.

The key to accomplishment is research. It need not be complex, in order to be useful, but it certainly should be intelligent.

For letters were written on typewriters, and there was a great deal of letter writing.

hard-headed, competent men.

1. And who shall apply the steadying hand?

2. He who has learned to be his own master.

3. He who has drawn in with the free air of the hills, far from the tumult of the cities, something of the permanence of their foundations.

4. He who has learned to think in terms of generations.

5. He who has courage in adversity.

Technocracy convinced many people that the machines meant unemployment.

It is being realized with a thud that the world is probably going to be ruled by those who know how, in the fullest sense, to apply science, whatever their other attributes may be.

my article about the future of individual devices to automate thought and knowledge

the National Academy of Sciences, which has been in existence since the Civil War period,

His management style depended heavily on enlisting a handful of elite universities, especially MIT and Johns Hopkins, and major industrial corporations, notably DuPont, to deliver usable innovations that could immediately influence the outcome of battles and the overall war with Germany and Japan.

The free untrammeled science and engineering of a democracy, when it once becomes directed toward an objective with full vigor, can outstrip the regimented efforts of any totalitarian state, provided there is anything approaching equality of resources on the two sides.

because our wartime effort was built upon the existing structure of freedom, with all that the word implies.

There must remain in the United States the opportunity for an Edison, the opportunity for any youth with initiative, resourcefulness, practicality and vision, to create in his own name and by his own efforts new things that will tend to make this country vigorous and strong and safe.

1. there are great sections of our industrial affairs that can be handled economically only by large industrial units.

2. the very complexity of modern life requires increased and centralized governmental activity, in order that the public interest may be fully protected and furthered by those measures of regulation and public works which government alone can perform adequately.

3. The point is that, as a people, we have two parallel objectives, and we have been clumsy at times and allowed one to submerge the other.

1. We seek a society in which initiative and talent may have an outlet, and in which the individual may have opportunity to rise by his own efforts and contributions and not merely by the fixed operation of a system.

2. We would be willing to sacrifice, if need be, some mechanical efficiency in the interests of individual freedom.

3. My own conviction is that no sacrifice in the full effectiveness of the country is truly involved in the long run; and that, on the contrary, the elements which have rendered us strong in the past will render us stronger still in the future if we have sufficient intelligence and conviction to insist upon their preservation.

1. If we are wise there will be, in the future, many Edison?s in the United States.

2. They may not shine with his peculiar brilliance, but they will add to the well-being of the nation a necessary element which can be added in no other way.

3. Their opportunity must be preserved open before them.

This means that one such super-super bomb would be equivalent in blast damage to 1,000 raids of 1,000 B-29 Fortresses delivering their load of high explosive on one target.

1. The record of the second aspect of the application of science to warfare is magnificent.

2. Medical aid, with the most advanced methods, was available at the moment a wounded man dropped.

3. Of the seriously wounded that arrived at base hospitals only a few indeed finally succumbed.

4. These base hospitals were often located in tropical areas that were once disease-ridden and had been largely freed from this scourge.

5. Penicillin, blood plasma, sulphonamides [synthetic medicines], DDT, atabrine [an anti-malarial compound], new treatments for burns, advanced surgery, combined with superb organization and rare devotion to duty to bring to bear every aid that science could offer to heal those who carried the fight directly to the enemy, for us all.

1. A democracy is efficient in emergency for the spirit which it engenders in its normal course is an essential ingredient of great accomplishment under stress.

2. The old contention that only totalitarianism can cope with the complexities of modern life is a fallacy.

3. Total complex warfare so emphasizes the advantages of the voluntary collaboration of free men that the democracy will excel in any war, long or short, unless indeed it is so short sighted as to be caught utterly unprepared.

4. In substantially every important area of the scientific and technical war effort, the enemy [during the course of World War II] was outclassed by the great democracies.

5. Regimented and controlled labor is not efficient labor!

6. Germany never established partnership, or anything remotely approaching it, between her military men and her scientists.

7. It never brought its scientists, engineers and industrialists into the common effort with genuine teamwork.

8. Its decisions on scientific programs were made in the pattern of all despotic decisions, without the free play and give and take of independent minds, guided by the scientific truth and not by personal fears or ambitions.

9. It badly fumbled the effort at every point. Considering the basis on which that effort was built, one could hardly expect that it would do otherwise.

10. The German failure was due to many causes. Its comprehensive failure in the scientific field was due in no small degree to the fact that true scientific progress, and its effective utilization, prosper well only in the atmosphere of untrammeled scientific freedom.

11. This is only a small part of the great truth that man reaches his peak accomplishment of mind and intellect only when free, but it is an important point with many practical implications.

1. It failed because the atmosphere of freedom is favorable to that collaboration of men of diverse talents which is essential to the effective prosecution of highly complex undertakings.

2. when it girds itself for war, it combines the rigid controls which are then essential with the spirit of freedom which it carries over into the emergency.

3. It failed because the regularity and lack of confusion which are the pride of the totalitarians are far exceeded in importance in the modern complex world by the effectiveness, by the efficiency, of the untrammeled spirit which develops fully under freedom.

..truly significant attainments become lost in the mass of the inconsequential.

A record, if it is to be useful to science, must be continuously extended, it must be stored, and above all it must be consulted. Today we make the record conventionally by writing

Technical difficulties of all sorts have been ignored, certainly, but also ignored are means as yet unknown which may come any day to accelerate technical progress as violently as did the advent of the thermionic tube. In order that the picture may not be too commonplace, by reason of sticking to present-day patterns, it may be well to mention one such possibility, not to prophesy but merely to suggest, for prophecy based on extension of the known has substance, while prophecy founded on the unknown is only a doubly involved guess.

His excursions may be more enjoyable if he can re-acquire the privilege of forgetting the manifold things he does not need to have immediately at hand, with some assurance that he can find them again if they prove important.

He may perish in conflict before he learns to wield that record (of accumulated and recorded science and wisdom) for his true good.

Essential, new knowledge can be obtained only through basic scientific research.

The responsibility for basic research in medicine and the underlying sciences, so essential to progress in the war against disease, falls primarily upon the medical schools and universities. Yet we find that the traditional sources of support for medical research in the medical schools and universities, largely endowment income, foundation grants, and private donations, are diminishing and there is no immediate prospect of a change in this trend. Meanwhile, the cost of medical research has been rising. If we are to maintain the progress in medicine which has marked the last 25 years, the Government should extend financial support to basic medical research in the medical schools and in universities.

1. Expenditures for scientific research by industry and Government increased from $140,000,000 in 1930 to $309,000,000 in 1940.

2. Those for the colleges and universities increased from $20,000,000 to $31,000,000, while those for the research institutes declined from $5,200,000 to $4,500,000 during the same period.

3. If the colleges, universities, and research institutes are to meet the rapidly increasing demands of industry and Government for new scientific knowledge, their basic research should be strengthened by use of public funds.

1. The responsibility for the creation of new scientific knowledge?and for most of its application?

2. rests on that small body of men and women who understand the fundamental laws of nature

3. and are skilled in the techniques of scientific research.

4. We shall have rapid or slow advance on any scientific frontier depending on the number of highly qualified and trained scientists exploring it.

1. The history of the Office of Scientific Research and Development [is] the history of a rapid transition, from warfare as it has been waged for thousands of years by the direct clash of hordes of armed men, to a new type of warfare in which science becomes applied to destruction on a wholesale basis.

2. It marks, therefore, a turning point in the broad history of civilization. It begins in 1940, when this country was still asleep under the delusion of isolation?when only a few realized that a supreme test was inevitable, to determine whether the democratic form of government could survive?when none could see clearly the full revolution in the art of war that impended.

3. [Any history of OSRD] recites the extraordinarily rapid evolution of weapons, as the accumulated backlog of scientific knowledge became directly applied to radar, amphibious warfare, aerial combat, the proximity fuse and the atomic bomb.

4. But it tells also of something that is more fundamental even than this diversion of the progress of science into methods of destruction. It shows how men of good will, under stress, can outperform all that dictatorship can bring to bear?as they collaborate effectively, and apply those qualities of character developed only under freedom.

5. It demonstrates that democracy is strong and virile, and that free men can defend their ideals as ably in a highly complex world as when they left the plow in the furrow to grasp the smoothbore.

6. This is the heartening fact which should give us renewed courage and assurance, even as we face a future in which war must be abolished, and in which that end can be reached only by resolution, patience and resourcefulness of a whole people.

The shepherd on the hill at night views the stars and ponders, not just that he can thus care better for his sheep, not just that he is idle and his mind roams, but because he wonders whether, beyond the stars, lies the reason why he can thus ponder.