Peter Young

“Those who argue for more government funding of science, or of anything else, should never forget the cost of government money, namely the taxes that impoverish society to enable government to impose its particular, narrow, harsh vision of a modern university.”
― Terence Kealey, The Economic Laws of Scientific Research

“The hobby scientists flourished under laissez faire, but laissez-faire Britain came to an end in 1914. Before 1914 the Government sequestered less than 10 per cent of the nation's wealth in taxes, but between 1918 and 1939 the Government increased this to about 25 per cent of GNP, and since 1945 the Government has spent between 40-50 per cent GNP. Because of the attrition of inherited wealth and of private means, the hobby scientist is now practically extinct.”
― Terence Kealey, The Economic Laws of Scientific Research

“humans tend to gravitate quickly from the observation of what exists to the presumption that an existing state of affairs is normal and thus must embody a certain ethical necessity. When upheavals or disruptions occur, they quickly adapt to the new circumstances, assigning to them the same normative quality they had perceived in the prior order of things.168”
― Christopher Munro Clark, The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914

“The loss of the hobby scientists has been unfortunate because the hobby scientists tended to be spectacularly good. They were good because they tended to do original science. Professional scientists tend to play it safe; they need to succeed, which tempts them into doing experiments that are certain to produce results. Similarly, grant-giving bodies which are accountable to government try only to give money for experiments that are likely to work. But experiments that are likely to work are probably boring – indeed, if they are that predictable, they are barely experiments at all; rather, they represent the development of established science rather than the creation of the new (though science is so unpredictable that even so-called predictable experiments will yield unpredictable results on occasion). But the hobby scientist is unaccountable.”
― Terence Kealey, The Economic Laws of Scientific Research