6 Quotes by Robert K. Merton

Most institutions demand unqualified faith; but the institution of science makes skepticism a virtue.

Max Weber was right in subscribing to the view that one need not be Caesar in order to understand Caesar. But there is a temptation for us theoretical sociologists to act sometimes as though it is not necessary even to study Caesar in order to understand him. Yet we know that the interplay of theory and research makes both for understanding of the specific case and expansion of the general rule.

Science is public, not private, knowledge.

The purely abstract theorist runs the risk that, as with modern decor, the furniture of the mind will be sparse, bare, and uncomfortable.

A cardinal American virtue, ‘ambition,’ promotes a cardinal American vice, ’deviant behavior.

Anticipatory plagiarism occurs when someone steals your original idea and publishes it a hundred years before you were born.