Science & Tech Quote by George E. Brown, Jr.

A politician admitting he loved science before he could even name it is a quiet flex, and a strategic one. George E. Brown, Jr. isn’t romanticizing lab coats; he’s constructing an origin story that bypasses ideology and lands in character. The line frames curiosity as instinct rather than affiliation, a way of saying: my commitment to evidence wasn’t acquired for talking points, it was there before I had the vocabulary to perform it.

That matters in American political culture, where “science” often shows up as a partisan prop or a technocratic threat. Brown’s phrasing splits the difference. It’s disarmingly personal (a childhood impulse), but it also signals competence: he’s not merely “pro-science” in the abstract; he’s someone whose default setting is to ask how things work. The subtext is trust-building. If you can persuade people you were wired this way early, you don’t have to litigate every policy position as opportunism.

Context sharpens it. Brown built a reputation as a rare kind of lawmaker who treated research and innovation as public infrastructure, not boutique spending. Coming from that lane, the quote reads like a rebuttal to the caricature of politicians as incurious marketers. It also nods to a broader civic argument: science isn’t just a credentialed institution; it’s a habit of mind. By placing that habit before the label, Brown claims science as something more democratic and less alienating than the word can sometimes feel.