We living things are a late outgrowth of the metabolism of our galaxy. The carbon that enters into our composition was cooked in a remote past in a dying star. The waters of ancient seas set the pattern of ions in our blood. The ancient atmospheres moulded our metabolism.

I think if a physician wrote on a death certificate that old age was the cause of death, he'd be thrown out of the union. There is always some final event, some failure of an organ, some last attack of pneumonia, that finishes off a life. No one dies of old age.

Death seems to have been a rather late invention in evolution. One can go a long way in evolution before encountering an authentic corpse.

Nuclear weapons offer us nothing but a balance of terror, and a balance of terror is still terror.

The great questions are those an intelligent child asks and, getting no answers, stops asking.

The thought that we're in competition with Russians or with Chinese is all a mistake, and trivial. We are one species, with a world to win.

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.