Advice for a Young Investigator Quotes

“Any man could, if he were so inclined, be the sculptor of his own brain.”
― Santiago Ramon y Cajal, Advice for a Young Investigator

“Heroes and scholars represent the opposite extremes... The scholar struggles for the benefit of all humanity, sometimes to reduce physical effort, sometimes to reduce pain, and sometimes to postpone death, or at least render it more bearable. In contrast, the patriot sacrifices a rather substantial part of humanity for the sake of his own prestige. His statue is always erected on a pedestal of ruins and corpses... In contrast, all humanity crowns a scholar, love forms the pedestal of his statues, and his triumphs defy the desecration of time and the judgment of history.”
― Santiago Ramón y Cajal, Advice for a Young Investigator

“If a solution fails to appear ... and yet we feel success is just around the corner, try resting for a while. ... Like the early morning frost, this intellectual refreshment withers the parasitic and nasty vegetation that smothers the good seed. Bursting forth at last is the flower of truth.”
― Santiago Ramón y Cajal, Advice for a Young Investigator

“It is important to realize that if certain areas of science appear to be quite mature, others are in the process of development, and yet others remain to be born.”
― Santiago Ramón y Cajal, Advice for a Young Investigator

“The indescribable pleasure—which pales the rest of life's joys—is abundant compensation for the investigator who endures the painful and persevering analytical work that precedes the appearance of the new truth, like the pain of childbirth. It is true to say that nothing for the scientific scholar is comparable to the things that he has discovered. Indeed, it would be difficult to find an investigator willing to exchange the paternity of a scientific conquest for all the gold on earth. And if there are some who look to science as a way of acquiring gold instead of applause from the learned, and the personal satisfaction associated with the very act of discovery, they have chosen the wrong profession.”
― Santiago Ramón y Cajal, Advice for a Young Investigator

“Our novice runs the risk of failure without additional traits: a strong inclination toward originality, a taste for research, and a desire to experience the incomparable gratification associated with the act of discovery itself.”
― Santiago Ramón y Cajal, Advice for a Young Investigator

“What a wonderful stimulant it would be for the beginner if his instructor, instead of amazing and dismaying him with the sublimity of great past achievements, would reveal instead the origin of each scientific discovery, the series of errors and missteps that preceded it— information that, from a human perspective, is essential to an accurate explanation of the discovery. Skillful pedagogical tactics such as this would instill the conviction that the discoverer, along with being an illustrious person of great talent and resolve, was in the final analysis a human being just like everyone else.”
― Santiago Ramón y Cajal, Advice for a Young Investigator

“The mediocre can be educated; geniuses educate themselves.”
― Santiago Ramón y Cajal, Advice for a Young Investigator

“It is fair to say that, in general, no problems have been exhausted; instead, men have been exhausted by the problems”
― Santiago Ramón y Cajal, Advice for a Young Investigator

“All outstanding work, in art as well as in science, results from immense zeal applied to a great idea.”
― Santiago Ramón y Cajal, Advice for a Young Investigator

“consider the possibility that any man could, if he were so inclined, be the sculptor of his own brain, and that even the least gifted may, like the poorest land that has been well cultivated and fertilized, produce an abundant harvest.”
― Santiago Ramón y Cajal, Advice for a Young Investigator

“Oh comforting solitude, how favorable thou art to original thought!”
― Santiago Ramón y Cajal, Advice for a Young Investigator

“«poco basta cada día si cada día logramos ese poco».”
― Santiago Ramón y Cajal, LOS TÓNICOS DE LA VOLUNTAD: Reglas y consejos sobre investigación científica

“There are highly cultivated, wonderfully endowed minds whose wills suffer from a particular form of lethargy, which is all the more serious because it is not apparent to them and is usually not thought of as being particularly important. Its undeniable symptoms include a facility for exposition, a creative and restless imagination, an aversion to the laboratory, and an indomitable dislike for concrete science and seemingly unimportant data. They claim to view things on a grand scale; they live in the clouds. They prefer the book to the monograph, brilliant and audacious hypotheses to classic but sound concepts. When faced with a difficult problem, they feel an irresistible urge to formulate a theory rather than to question nature. As soon as they happen to notice a slight, half-hidden, analogy between two phenomena, or succeed in fitting some new data or other into the framework of a general theory—whether true or false—they dance for joy and genuinely believe that they are the most admirable of reformers. The method is legitimate in principle, but they abuse it by falling into the pit of viewing things from a single perspective. The essential thing for them is the beauty of the concept. It matters very little whether the concept itself is based on thin air, so long as it is beautiful and ingenious, well-thought-out and symmetrical.”
― Santiago Ramón y Cajal, Advice for a Young Investigator

“Fortunately, we needn’t dwell at length on this point in order to correct mistaken social values. No one would deny the fact that he who knows and acts is the one who counts, not he who knows and falls asleep.”
― Santiago Ramón y Cajal, Advice for a Young Investigator

“And without listening to the reply, the erudite one expounds with warm eloquence some wild and audacious proposal with no basis in reality and endurable only in the context of a chat about spiritual matters.”
― Santiago Ramón y Cajal, Advice for a Young Investigator

“Let us not be deceived by optimism and good intentions. Despite their exceptional merit, and the zeal and energy they display in the classroom, such teachers suffer from a disease of the will—although psychologists may not see it this way. Their sluggishness and neglect may not justify a diagnosis of abulia or loss of will power, but their students and friends may nevertheless consider them abnormal and suggest some adequate form of spiritual therapy, with all due respect to their fine intellectual abilities.”
― Santiago Ramón y Cajal, Advice for a Young Investigator

“It is needless to point out that the investigator will be concerned less with doctrine and philosophical creed—which unfortunately change every fifteen or twenty years—than with the criteria of truth and the standards of critical judgment.”
― Santiago Ramón y Cajal, Advice for a Young Investigator

“General education. The need for specialization. Foreign languages. How monographs should be read. The absolute necessity of seeking inspiration in nature. Mastery of technique. In search of original data”
― Santiago Ramón y Cajal, Advice for a Young Investigator

“a strong inclination toward originality, a taste for research, and a desire to experience the incomparable gratification associated with the act of discovery itself.”
― Santiago Ramón y Cajal, Advice for a Young Investigator

“The secret lies in the method of work; in taking advantage of as much time as possible for the activity; in not retiring for the day until at least two or three hours are dedicated to the task; in wisely constructing a dike in front of the intellectual dispersion and waste of time required by social activity; and finally, in avoiding as much as possible the malicious gossip of the café and other entertainment—which squanders our nervous energy (sometimes even causing disgust) and draws us away from our main task with childish conceits and futile pursuits.”
― Santiago Ramón y Cajal, Advice for a Young Investigator

“It is as if the mental image that is studied over a period of time were to sprout appendages like an ameba— outgrowths that extend in all directions while avoiding one obstacle after another—before interdigitating with related ideas.”
― Santiago Ramón y Cajal, Advice for a Young Investigator

“It is fair to say that, in general, no problems have been exhausted; instead, men have been exhausted by the problems. Soil that appears impoverished to one researcher reveals its fertility to another.”
― Santiago Ramón y Cajal, Advice for a Young Investigator

“Even in the most exact sciences there are always some laws that are maintained exclusively through the force of authority. To demonstrate their inaccuracy with new research is always an excellent way to begin genuine scientific work.”
― Santiago Ramón y Cajal, Advice for a Young Investigator

“Great men are at times geniuses, occasionally children, and always incomplete. Even when the work of a genius is subjected to critical analysis and no errors are found, it is important to realize that everything he has discovered in a particular field is almost nothing in comparison with what remains to be discovered. Nature offers inexhaustible wealth to all. There is certainly no reason to envy our predecessors, or to exclaim with Alexander following the victories of Philip, "My father is going to leave me nothing to conquer!”
― Santiago Ramón y Cajal, Advice for a Young Investigator

“In other words, when they are not simply empty formulas they become formal expressions of the mechanism of understanding used during the process of research.”
― Santiago Ramón y Cajal, Advice for a Young Investigator

“Gustavo Solivellas dice: "La vanidad nos persigue hasta en el lecho de la muerte. La soportamos con entereza porque deseamos superar su terrible grandeza y cautivar la admiración de los espectadores" (Santiago Ramón y Cajal)”
― Santiago Ramón y Cajal, Advice for a Young Investigator