The applause is a celebration not only of the actors but also of the audience. It constitutes a shared moment of delight.

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.

The respect for human rights, essential if we are to use technology wisely, is not something alien that must be grafted onto science. On the contrary, it is integral to science, as also to scholarship in general.

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.

Scientia is knowledge. It is only in the popular mind that it is equated with facts.

In nation after nation, democracy has taken the place of autocracy.

Authority in science exists to be questioned, since heresy is the spring from which new ideas flow.