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.

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

For science must breathe the oxygen of freedom.

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

A wise man in China asked his gardener to plant a shrub. The gardener objected that it only flowered once in a hundred years. "In that case," said the wise man, "plant it immediately." [On the importance of fundamental research.]

Science exists, moreover, only as a journey toward troth. Stifle dissent and you end that journey.

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.