Nobel Prize Quotes

• Thanks to the high standing which science has for so long attain and to the impartiality of the Nobel Prize Committee, the Nobel Prize for Physics is rightly considered everywhere as the highest reward within the reach of workers in Natural Philosophy.

  Guglielmo Marconi

  Philosophy, Long, Rewards

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• The Nobel Prize is an honor unique in the world in having found its way into the hearts and minds of simple people everywhere. It casts a light of peace and reason upon us all; and for that I am especially grateful.

  George Wald

  Peace, Grateful, Heart

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• People ask me often [whether] the Nobel Prize [was] the thing you were aiming for all your life, and I say that would be crazy. Nobody would aim for a Nobel Prize because, if you didn't get it, your whole life would be wasted. What we were aiming at was getting people well, and the satisfaction of that is much greater than any prize you can get.

  Gertrude B. Elion

  Crazy, People, Would Be

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• If I found a cure for a huge disease, while I was hobbling up onstage to accept the Nobel Prize they'd be playing the theme song from 'Three's Company'.

  John Ritter

  Song, Three, Disease

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• The Nobel Prize is fine, but the drugs I've developed are rewards in themselves.

  Gertrude B. Elion

  Medicine, Drug, Rewards

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• There must have been something in the air of Gary that led one into economics: the first Nobel Prize winner, Paul Samuelson, was also from Gary, as were several other distinguished economists.

  Joseph Stiglitz

  Air, Firsts, Winner

  Autobiographical Essay for the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel, www.nobelprize.org. 2001.

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• When I received the Nobel Prize, the only big lump sum of money I have ever seen, I had to do something with it. The easiest way to drop this hot potato was to invest it, to buy shares. I knew that World War II was coming and I was afraid that if I had shares which rise in case of war, I would wish for war. So I asked my agent to buy shares which go down in the event of war. This he did. I lost my money and saved my soul.

  Albert Szent-Gyorgyi

  Money, Fear, War

  "The Crazy Ape: Written by a Biologist for the Young". Book by Albert Szent-Györgyi, 2014.

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• The Nobel Prize, so long regarded in our science as the highest reward a man's work can earn, must bring to its recipient a most solemn sense of his debt to his fellow scientists and those of the past.

  Edward Mills Purcell

  Past, Men, Long

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• I think this is the most extraordinary collection of talent, of human knowledge, that has ever been gathered at the White House - with the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone.

  John F. Kennedy

  Knowledge, Science, Thinking

  Remarks at dinner honoring Nobel Prize winners of the Western Hemisphere, Washington, D.C., 29 Apr. 1962

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• If I could explain it to the average person, I wouldn't have been worth the Nobel Prize.

  Richard P. Feynman

  Average, Nobel, Persons

  Richard P. Feynman (2015). “The Quotable Feynman”, p.342, Princeton University Press

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• I'd kill for a Nobel Peace Prize.

  Steven Wright

  Funny, Life, Peace

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• Science walks forward on two feet, namely theory and experiment.

  Robert Andrews Millikan

  Two, Feet, Theory

  "The electron and the light-quant from the experimental point of view". Robert Andrews Millikan's Nobel Lecture, May 23, 1924.

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• It wasn't until the Nobel Prize that they really thawed out. They couldn't understand my books, but they could understand $30,000.

  William Faulkner

  Book, Understanding, Literature

  "Faulkner Without Fanfare". Esquire Magazine, July 1963.

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• It was almost as incredible as if you fired a 15-inch shell at a piece of tissue paper and it came back and hit you.

  Ernest Rutherford

  Pieces, Tissue Paper, Shells

  "Rutherford and the Nature of the Atom" by E. N. da C. Andrade, (p. 111), 1964.

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• When His Holiness won the Nobel Peace Prize, there was a quantum leap. He is not seen as solely a Tibetan anymore; he belongs to the world.

  Richard Gere

  World, Holiness, Quantum

  "Richard Gere: My Journey as a Buddhist". Interview with Melvin McLeod, www.lionsroar.com. June 9, 2016.

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• In many cases, people who win a Nobel prize, their work slows down after that because of the distractions. Yes, fame is rewarding, but it's a pity if it keeps you from doing the work you are good at.

  Charles Hard Townes

  Winning, People, Pity

  "Charles H. Townes: What I've Learned" by Scott Carrier, www.esquire.com. January 29, 2007.

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• I read once, which I loved so much, that this great physicist who won a Nobel Prize said that every day when he got home, his dad asked him not what he learned in school but his dad said, 'Did you ask any great questions today?' And I always thought, what a beautiful way to educate kids that we're excited by their questions, not by our answers and whether they can repeat our answers.

  Diane Sawyer

  Beautiful, Dad, Home

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• I cannot forget that the Nobel Prize for Peace was also a commission - a commission to work harder than I had ever worked before for "the brotherhood of man".

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  Hard Work, Men, Brotherhood Of Man

  Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (2013). “"In a Single Garment of Destiny": A Global Vision of Justice”, p.114, Beacon Press

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• The EU is an unique project that replaced war with peace, hate with solidarity. Overwhelming emotion for awarding of Nobel prize to EU

  Martin Schulz

  Hate, War, Unique

  Twitter post from Oct 12, 2012

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• In a way, the Nobel Prize has been something of a pain in the neck, though there was at least one time that I got some fun out of it, Shortly after I won the Prize, Gweneth and I received an invitation from the Brazilian government to be the guests of honor at the Carnaval celebrations in Rio.

  Richard P. Feynman

  Fun, Pain, Government

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• No vegetarian has been able to achieve a single Nobel prize. It is a clear-cut condemnation of vegetarianism. Why do all the Nobel prizes go to non-vegetarians? - because vegetarian food does not contain those proteins which create intelligence. And unless we provide those proteins, intelligence cannot grow. The body is a very delicate phenomenon and it needs a very well balanced diet.

  Rajneesh

  Cutting, Vegetarianism, Needs

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• The Nobel Prize is the best thing that can happen to a writer in terms of how it affects your contracts, the publishers, and the seriousness with which your work is taken. On the other hand, it does interfere with your private life, or it can if you let it, and it has zero effect on the writing. It doesn't help you write better and if you let it, it will intimidate you about future projects.

  Toni Morrison

  Zero, Taken, Writing

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• If there is a Nobel prize for dirt and filth, India will win it, no doubt.

  Jairam Ramesh

  Winning, Doubt, Dirt

  "Jairam Ramesh's legacy is an Indian environment ministry with an identity", www.theguardian.com. July 13, 2011.

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• I'm the least-educated person in my immediate family. My two other brothers have multiple advanced degrees, and I only have one. [...] Actually, now that I've got a Nobel Prize, I feel equal.

  Steven Chu

  Brother, Two, Degrees

  Interview with Spencer Michels in "The NewsHour" on PBS, May 2, 2007.

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• Winning the Nobel Prize does not automatically qualify you to be commander in chief. I think George Bush has proved definitively that to be president, you don't need to care about science, literature or peace.

  Stephen Colbert

  Winning, Thinking, President

  "A Mock Columnist, Amok" by Maureen Dowd, www.nytimes.com. October 14, 2007.

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