Nobel Lecture Quotes & Sayings

Come, daddy, Harry doesn't want to talk to us right now. He's just too polite to say it. ~Luna Lovegood — J.K. Rowling

What can a state institution teach us? In what way can I be reformed by a penal colony and you by, say, Russian TV Channel 1? In his Nobel lecture, Joseph Brodsky said, 'The more substantial an individual's aesthetic experience is, the sounder his taste, the sharper his moral focus, the freer - though not necessarily the happier - he is.' We in Russia once again find ourselves in a situation where resistance, especially aesthetic resistance, becomes the only viable moral choice as well as a civic duty." Nadya — Masha Gessen

Cosmology is a science which has only a few observable facts to work with. — Robert Woodrow Wilson

By educating me at home, my parents were able to give me individualized attention without the usual distractions that kids in regular school experience, like dating and friendship. Not to mention that traditional school can be dangerous. I've heard about kids catching the flu and chicken pox, even Judaism.
And how about those poor kids lugging all those heavy books to and from school every day? My books never went anywhere, just like me. I felt so bad when I'd see kids on my street giggling and chasing each other around with those awkward backpacks. — Colin Nissan

And this is the ultimate lesson that our knowledge of the mode of transmission of typhus has taught us: Man carries on his skin a parasite, the louse. Civilization rids him of it. Should man regress, should he allow himself to resemble a primitive beast, the louse begins to multiply again and treats man as he deserves, as a brute beast. This conclusion would have endeared itself to the warm heart of Alfred Nobel. My contribution to it makes me feel less unworthy of the honour which you have conferred upon me in his name. — Charles Nicolle

I have seen him in the watchfires of a hundred circling camps They have builded him an altar in the evening dews and damps, I have read His righteous sentence by the dim and flaring lamps, His Day is marching on. — Julia Ward Howe

What will the last syllable of recorded time be, and who will be the one to write it? No matter how long we live, we still wonder when our world will end and how. — Thea Harrison

Tapestries are made by many artisans working together. The contributions of separate workers cannot be discerned in the completed work, and the loose and false threads have been covered over. So it is in our picture of particle physics. — Sheldon L. Glashow

Anyone can train to be a gladiator. What marks you out is having the mindset of a champion. — Manu Bennett

With comedy I can search for the profound. — Dario Fo

As I noted in my Nobel lecture, an early insight in my work on the economics of information concerned the problem of appropriability - the difficulty that those who pay for information have in getting returns. — Joseph Stiglitz

One can still say that quantum mechanics is the key to understanding magnetism. When one enters the first room with this key there are unexpected rooms beyond, but it is always the master key that unlocks each door. — John H. Van Vleck

Sometimes, she had discovered, you had to walk around the holes in your life, instead of falling into them. — Priscilla Cummings

Existence has billions of doors, but death has none! — Mehmet Murat Ildan

Time means a lot to me because you see I am also a learner and am often lost in the joy of forever developing. — Bruce Lee

I thought in my Nobel Lecture I pointed that I was delighted that the Swedish Academy of Science did not quote anything about my current work right now, because the current work that my group is focusing on is actually both the time resolve electrons and possibly x-rays to be able to get the architecture of these molecules, the molecular structures themselves, of very complex biological systems. That's the ultimate goal. — Ahmed H. Zewail

Sometimes the only solution when the data is very noisy - is to focus more on process than on results. — Nate Silver

Now we, if not in the spirit, have been caught up to see our earth, our mother, Gaia Mater, set like a jewel in space. We have no excuse now for supposing her riches inexhaustible nor the area we have to live on limitless because unbounded. We are the children of that great blue white jewel. Through our mother we are part of the solar system and part through that of the whole universe. In the blazing poetry of the fact we are children of the stars. — William Golding

In the first place, the preparation of the Nobel lecture which I am to give has shown me, even more clearly than I knew before, how many others share with me, often, indeed, have anticipated me, in the discoveries for which you have awarded me the prize. — Frederick Soddy

My mother had no end of tragedy in her life. She would make herself get up and take a deep breath and go out and do laundry. Hang up sheets. — Patti Smith