Rita Levi-Montalcini Quotes

At 100, I have a mind that is superior - thanks to experience - than when I was 20.

If I die tomorrow or in a year, it is the same - it is the message you leave behind you that counts.

My life has been enriched by excellent human relations, work and interests. I have never felt lonely.

I told Mother of my decision to study medicine. She encouraged me to speak to Father ... I began in a roundabout way ... He listened, looking at me with that serious and penetrating gaze of his that caused me such trepidation, and asked whether I knew what I wanted to do.

After centuries of dormancy, young women ... can now look toward a future moulded by their own hands.

After 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.

Above all, don't fear difficult moments. The best comes from them

An example of perfection in nature is the cockroach. It was living six million years before us and it may outlast us by that long. The brain of a cockroach is a splendid little engine. It doesn't evolve and it doesn't need to. The human brain is a disaster from the point of view of perfection
great intellectual power combined with primitive emotional reactions. Human beings today are living with terrible risks of their own creation
nuclear weapons, the exploitation of natural resources, the great disparity between the wealthy and the poor. Our brains will probably bring us to destruction, but we also have the possibility of growth, evolution. I prefer being a human. We shouldn't always look for perfection, in nature or our lives.

[Biographical info on Rita]
Born and raised in a Sephardic Jewish family in which culture and love of learning were categorical imperatives, she abandoned religion and embraced atheism. She devoted herself to Science, getting to the point of renouncing marriage for scientific research.
... Unlike other people, Rita Levi Montalcini was a complete human being.

A child from the age of 2 or 3 absorbs what is in the environment and what generates hatred for anyone perceived to be different.

At 20, I realized that I could not possibly adjust to a feminine role as conceived by my father and asked him permission to engage in a professional career. In eight months I filled my gaps in Latin, Greek and mathematics, graduated from high school, and entered medical school in Turin.

The process for awarding Nobel prizes is so complex that it cannot be corrupted.

It's not enough what I did in the past - there is also the future.

The four of us enjoyed a most wonderful family atmosphere filled with love and reciprocal devotion. Both parents were highly cultured and instilled in us their high appreciation of intellectual pursuit. It was, however, a typical Victorian style of life, all decisions being taken by the head of the family, the husband and father.

Find first peace within yourself. Don't eat too much. Keep your brain active. Love.

The body does whatever it wants. I am not my body; I am my mind.

If I had not been discriminated against or had not suffered persecution, I would never have received the Nobel Prize.

Babies did not attract me, and I was altogether without the maternal sense so highly developed in small and adolescent girls.