If I had not been discriminated against or had not suffered persecution, I would never have received the Nobel Prize.
Rita Levi-MontalciniThe instruments, glassware, and chemical reagents necessary for my project were the same as my 19th-century predecessors had.
Rita Levi-MontalciniAfter a short period spent in Brussels as a guest of a neurological institute, I returned to Turin on the verge of the invasion of Belgium by the German army, Spring 1940, to join my family. The two alternatives left then to us were either to emigrate to the United States, or to pursue some activity that needed neither support nor connection with the outside Aryan world where we lived. My family chose this second alternative. I then decided to build a small research unit at home and installed it in my bedroom.
Rita Levi-MontalciniIt is imperfection - not perfection - that is the end result of the program written into that formidably complex engine that is the human brain, and of the influences exerted upon us by the environment and whoever takes care of us during the long years of our physical, psychological and intellectual development.
Rita Levi-Montalcini