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

Young people ask me if this country is serious about science. They aren't thinking about the passport that they will hold, but the country that they must rely on for support and encouragement.

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

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.

Science is an enterprise that can only flourish if it puts the truth ahead of nationality, ethnicity, class and color.

Some dreamers demand that scientists only discover things that can be used for good.

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