"I judge things from an evolutionary perspective — "How does this serve and contribute to the process of our own evolution?" — rather than think of good and evil in moral terms. I see the triumph of good over evil as a manifestation of the error-correcting process of evolution."
Jonas Edward Salk was an American virologist and medical researcher who developed one of the first successful polio vaccines. He was born in New York City and attended the City College of New York and New York University School of Medicine.
"I speak about universal evolution and teleological evolution, because I think the process of evolution reflects the wisdom of nature. I see the need for wisdom to become operative. We need to try to put all of these things together in what I call an evolutionary philosophy of our time."
"As a bio-philosopher — as someone who draws upon the scriptures of nature, recognizing that we are the product of the process of evolution, and in a sense, we have become the process itself — through the emergence and evolution of our consciousness, our awareness, our capacity to imagine and to anticipate the future and to choose from amongst alternatives."
"You can have a team of unconventional thinkers, as well as conventional thinkers. If you dont have the support of others you cannot achieve anything altogether on your own. Its like a cry in the wilderness. In each instance there were others who could see the same thing, and there were others who could not. Its an obvious difference we see in those who you might say have a birds eye view, and those who have a worms eye view. Ive come to realize that we all have a different mind set, we all see things differently, and thats what the human condition is really all about."
"I look upon ourselves as partners in all of this, and that each of us contributes and does what he can do best. And so I see not a top rung and a bottom rung — I see all this horizontally — and I see this as part of a matrix. And I see every human being as having a purpose, a destiny, if you like. And what my hope is that we can find some way to fulfill the biological potential, if you like — the destiny that exists in each of us — and find ways and means to provide such opportunities for everyone. Now at the moment the world is suffering from large numbers of people who have no purpose in life — for whom there is no opportunity — and thats sad."
"Since whatever we do has to be part of a team, part of a community, we have to attempt to bring together those who have the same conviction, see the same things. Then it becomes a matter of time, when one or the other will prevail. Fortunately, there is all this diversity, and if not for that, problems would not be solved."
"Now, some people might look at something and let it go by, because they dont recognize the pattern and the significance. Its the sensitivity to pattern recognition that seems to me to be of great importance. Its a matter of being able to find meaning, whether its positive or negative, in whatever you encounter. Its like a journey. Its like finding the paths that will allow you to go forward, or that path that has a block that tells you to start over again or do something else."