Since we have had a history, men have pursued an ideal of immortality.

[Attributing the origin of life to spontaneous generation.] However improbable we regard this event, it will almost certainly happen at least once.... The time... is of the order of two billion years.... Given so much time, the "impossible" becomes possible, the possible probable, and the probable virtually certain. One only has to wait: time itself performs the miracles.

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

Civilization will end within 15 or 30 years unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind.

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

It's not good enough to give it tender, loving care, to supply it with breakfast foods, to buy it expensive educations. Those things don't mean anything unless this generation has a future. And we're not sure that it does.

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.