If you pay a man a salary

Joseph John Thomson

[I]f you pay a man a salary for doing research, he and you will want to have something to point to at the end of the year to show that the money has not been wasted. In promising work of the highest class, however, results do not come in this regular fashion, in fact years may pass without any tangible results being obtained, and the position of the paid worker would be very embarrassing and he would naturally take to work on a lower, or at any rate a different plane where he could be sure of getting year by year tangible results which would justify his salary. The position is this: You want this kind of research, but, if you pay a man to do it, it will drive him to research of a different kind. The only thing to do is to pay him for doing something else and give him enough leisure to do research for the love of it.

Fonte (em port.): Hardin, G., org. 1969. A natureza e o destino do homem. SP, Nacional. De acordo com Robert Strutt [Lord Rayleigh] (The life of Sir J. J. Thomson, Cambridge UP, 1942), trata-se de trecho de um discurso proferido por Thomson em 1916.