It takes a trained and discerning researcher to keep the goal in sight, and to detect evidence of the creeping progress toward it.

Even in the world of molecules the civilising influence of modest restraints is a cause for rejoicing.

A new sense of shared international responsibility is unmistakable in the voices of the United Nations and its agencies, and in the civil society of thousands of supra-national NGOs.

Nothing is more irredeemably irrelevant than bad science.

I knew, however, that it would cost ten times what I had available in order to build a molecular beam machine. I decided to follow a byway, rather than the highway. It is a procedure I have subsequently recommended to beginning scientists in this country, where research strategy is best modelled on that used by Wolfe at the Plains of Abraham.

Discoveries that are anticipated are seldom the most valuable. ... It's the scientist free to pilot his vessel across hidden shoals into open seas who gives the best value.

Though we explore in a culturally-conditioned way, the reality we sketch is universal.