"It was from them that I learned that hard work in stable surroundings could yield rewards, even if only in infinitesimally small increments"
About this Quote
Hard work is the easy part of the mythology; “stable surroundings” is the tell. Sidney Altman, a scientist who built a career on painstaking, often unglamorous lab work, is quietly rewriting the feel-good narrative of meritocracy into something closer to a lab manual: progress happens when conditions stop shifting under your feet. The line is calibrated like an experiment. “From them” nods to mentors, family, or a community that modeled not genius but repetition. He’s crediting an ecosystem, not a lone spark.
The phrase “could yield rewards” is notably non-triumphal. It’s conditional, almost skeptical, as if he’s seen enough null results to distrust promises. Then he tightens the screw: “even if only in infinitesimally small increments.” That’s scientific diction doing cultural work. “Infinitesimally” doesn’t romanticize struggle; it measures it. It frames achievement as accretion - a sequence of tiny deltas that only look like breakthroughs in hindsight.
Context matters here: Altman’s generation of researchers matured in institutions where long timelines, grant cycles, and apprenticeship shaped careers. He’s also, implicitly, mourning how rare “stable surroundings” feel now - in academia’s churn, in precarious labor, in lives disrupted by migration or inequality. The subtext isn’t “work hard and you’ll make it.” It’s sharper: give people steadiness, and effort becomes legible. Without that baseline, the increments - and the people making them - disappear.
The phrase “could yield rewards” is notably non-triumphal. It’s conditional, almost skeptical, as if he’s seen enough null results to distrust promises. Then he tightens the screw: “even if only in infinitesimally small increments.” That’s scientific diction doing cultural work. “Infinitesimally” doesn’t romanticize struggle; it measures it. It frames achievement as accretion - a sequence of tiny deltas that only look like breakthroughs in hindsight.
Context matters here: Altman’s generation of researchers matured in institutions where long timelines, grant cycles, and apprenticeship shaped careers. He’s also, implicitly, mourning how rare “stable surroundings” feel now - in academia’s churn, in precarious labor, in lives disrupted by migration or inequality. The subtext isn’t “work hard and you’ll make it.” It’s sharper: give people steadiness, and effort becomes legible. Without that baseline, the increments - and the people making them - disappear.
Quote Details
| Topic | Work Ethic |
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