Science Quote by Margaret Murray

There is a sly self-awareness baked into Margaret Murray's "I guess my enthusiasm kind of rubs off on people" - a line that sounds casual, even faintly amused, while quietly describing a serious tool of influence. Murray, a scientist working across an era when institutional authority was coded male and often hostile to women in the lab, frames charisma as contagion. "Rubs off" is domestic, tactile language, the opposite of the disembodied objectivity science pretends to run on. It's also strategic: she claims no throne, no grand leadership mantle. She "guesses". She "kind of" does it. That hedging reads less like insecurity than social navigation - a way to name power without triggering the penalties that come with openly owning it.

The intent is pragmatic. In research culture, especially in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, enthusiasm is not just mood; it's infrastructure. It's what gets colleagues to listen, students to persist, funders to care, and skeptical gatekeepers to grant you a little more time. Murray's phrasing suggests she understands that knowledge doesn't travel on data alone. It travels on energy, tone, and the permission people feel around you to be curious.

The subtext is a rebuke to the myth of the lone, purely rational scientist. Murray implies that science is social work: attention must be won, not assumed. The line lands because it treats persuasion as something almost accidental while revealing it as her chosen method - a soft power move delivered with a smile.