During the course of my research, I had had occasion to examine not only simple compounds, salts and oxides, but also a great number of minerals.
The truth is when those Butler Brothers folks turned down my discounting idea, I got a little angry, and maybe that helped me decide to swim upstream on my own.
Ignore the conventional wisdom. If everybody else is doing it one way, there’s a good chance you can find your niche by going in exactly the opposite direction.
Take the best out of everything and adapt it to your needs.
To succeed in this world, you have to change all the time.
Many of our best opportunities were created out of necessity.
I guess real merchants are like real fishermen: we have a special place in our memories for a few of the big ones.
High expectations are the key to everything.
Loosen up, and everybody around you will loosen up.
You can make a positive out of the most negative if you work at it hard enough.
I learned a long time ago that exercising your ego in public is definitely not the way to build an effective organization.
We should not allow it to be believed that all scientific progress can be reduced to mechanisms, machines, gearings, even though such machinery also has its beauty. Neither do I believe that the spirit of adventure runs any risk of disappearing in our world.
After all, science is essentially international, and it is only through lack of the historical sense that national qualities have been attributed to it.
When radium was discovered, no one knew that it would prove useful in hospitals. The work was one of pure science. And this is a proof that scientific work must not be considered from the point of view of the direct usefulness of it.
I have frequently been questioned, especially by women, of how I could reconcile family life with a scientific career. Well, it has not been easy.
There are sadistic scientists who hurry to hunt down errors instead of establishing the truth.
I am one of those who think like Nobel, that humanity will draw more good than evil from new discoveries.
In science, we must be interested in things, not in persons.
If I see anything vital around me, it is precisely that spirit of adventure, which seems indestructible and is akin to curiosity.
I am among those who think that science has great beauty.
A scientist in his laboratory is not a mere technician: he is also a child confronting natural phenomena that impress him as though they were fairy tales.
All my life through, the new sights of Nature made me rejoice like a child.
I was taught that the way of progress was neither swift nor easy.
Be less curious about people and more curious about ideas.