Like thousands of other boys, I had a little chemical laboratory in our cellar and think that some of our friends thought me a bit crazy.

Science is the search for the truth--it is not a game in which one tries to beat his opponent, to do harm to others. We need to have the spirit of science in international affairs, to make the conduct of international affairs the effort to find the right solution, the just solution of international problems, and not an effort by each nation to get the better of other nations, to do harm to them when it is possible. I believe in morality, in justice, in humanitarianism.

The best way to have a good idea is to have a lot of ideas.

Science is the search for truth, that is the effort to understand the world: it involves the rejection of bias, of dogma, of revelation, but not the rejection of morality.

We must have research for peace ... It would embrace the outstanding problems of morality. The time has come for man's intellect, his scientific method, to win over the immoral brutality and irrationality of war and militarism ... Now we are forced to eliminate from the world forever this vestige of prehistoric barbarism, this curse to the human race.

[Instead of collecting stamps, he collected dictionaries and encyclopaedias:] Because you can learn more from them.

Life is a relationship among molecules and not a property of any molecule.