Ernest Lawrence Quotes

• It never does much good to find out why you can't; put your effort into what you can do.

  Ernest Lawrence

  Effort, Doe, Can Do

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• No individual is alone responsible for a single stepping stone along the path of progress, and where the path is smooth progress is most rapid.

  Ernest Lawrence

  Progress, Stones, Path

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• I have gotten over feeling badly. We would be eternally miserable if our errors worried us too much because as we push forward we will make plenty more.

  Ernest Lawrence

  Errors, Feelings, Would Be

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• The day when the scientist, no matter how devoted, may make significant progress alone and without material help is past. This fact is most self-evident in our work.

  Ernest Lawrence

  Past, Self, Progress

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• Let us cherish the hope that the day is not far distant when we will be in the midst of this next adventure.

  Ernest Lawrence

  Travel, Adventure, Next

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• The day when the scientist, no matter how devoted, may make significant progress alone and without material help is past. This fact is most self-evident in our work. Instead of an attic with a few test tubes, bits of wire and odds and ends, the attack on the atomic nucleus has required the development and construction of great instruments on an engineering scale.

  Ernest Lawrence

  Science, Past, Odds

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• We have reached the age, those of us to whom fortune has assigned a post in life's struggle, when beaten and smashed and biffed by the lashing of the dragon's tail, we begin to appreciate that the old man was not such a fool after all. We saw our parents wrestling with the same dragon, and we thought, though we never spoke a thought aloud, 'Why doesn't he hit him on the head?' Alas, comrads, we know now. We have hit the dragon on the head and we have seen the dragon smile.

  Ernest Lawrence

  Struggle, Wrestling, Men

  Speech at Thayer's tenth anniversary reunion at Harvard, 1895.

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• In the Radiation Laboratory we count it a privilege to do everything we can to assist our medical colleagues in the application of these new tools to the problems of human suffering.

  Ernest Lawrence

  Suffering, Tools, Radiation

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• I have suggested that scientific progress requires a favorable environment.

  Ernest Lawrence

  Progress, Environment, Scientific Progress

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• The atomic bombs will surely shorten the war, and let us hope that they will effectively end war as a possibility in human affairs.

  Ernest Lawrence

  War, Bombs, Affair

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• I am mindful that scientific achievement is rooted in the past, is cultivated to full stature by many contemporaries and flourishes only in favorable environment. No individual is alone responsible for a single stepping stone along the path of progress, and where the path is smooth progress is most rapid. In my own work this has been particularly true.

  Ernest Lawrence

  Science, Past, Achievement

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• From the beginning of the Radiation Laboratory, I have had the rare good fortune of being in the center of a group of men of high ability, enthusiastic and completely devoted to scientific pursuits.

  Ernest Lawrence

  Men, Groups, Radiation

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• For it goes without saying that this great recognition at this time will aid tremendously our efforts to find the necessarily large funds for the next voyage of exploration farther into the depths of the atom.

  Ernest Lawrence

  Journey, Effort, Depth

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• But there is no joy in Mudville - mighty Casey has "struck out."

  Ernest Lawrence

  Baseball, Joy

  "Casey at the Bat". Poem by Ernest Lawrence, 1912.

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• Oh, somewhere in this favoured land the sun is shining bright; The band is playing somewhere; and somewhere hearts are light; And somewhere men are laughing; and little children shout; But there is no joy in Mudville- great Casey has struck out.

  Ernest Lawrence

  Sports, Children, Heart

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