When an old and distinguished person speaks to you, listen to him carefully and with respect โ but do not believe him. Never put your trust into anything but your own intellect. Your elder, no matter whether he has gray hair or has lost his hair, no matter whether he is a Nobel laureate โ may be wrong. The world progresses, year by year, century by century, as the members of the younger generation find out what was wrong among the things that their elders said. So you must always be skeptical โ always think for yourself.
Linus PaulingI like people. I like animals, too-whales and quail, dinosaurs and dodos. But I like human beings especially, and I am unhappy that the pool of human germ plasm, which determines the nature of the human race, is deteriorating.
Linus PaulingIf you want to have good ideas you must have many ideas. Most of them will be wrong, and what you have to learn is which ones to throw away.
Linus PaulingScience 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.
Linus PaulingHeisenberg has discussed the coupled double harmonic oscillator, and has shown that the ordinary rules of quantization lead to two non-combining sets of states in one of which the electrons are in phase and out of phase. The energy of the system is successively transferred from one to the other - resonance!
Linus Pauling