(Mad) Scientist Manifesto
Popular lectures are the easiest to listen to, but they are necessarily both superficial and misleading, since they have to be graded to the comprehension of an ignorant audience. Popular lecturers are in their nature parasitic. They exploit for fame or cash the work which has been done by their indigent and unknown brethren. One smallest new fact obtained in the laboratory, one brick built into the temple of science, far outweighs any second-hand exposition which passes an idle hour, but can leave no useful result behind it. I put forward this obvious reflection, not out of any desire to disparage the lecturer in particular, but that you may not lose your sense of proportion and mistake the acolyte for the high priest.
The highest type of bravery is the bravery of the scientific mind. It is decreed by a merciful Nature that the human brain cannot think of two things simultaneously, so that if it be steeped in curiosity as to science it has no room for merely personal considerations.
References:
- Doyle, Authur Conan. “The Lost World”. Project Gutenberg. June 01, 1994. Accessed September 26, 2021. https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/139.