Alfred Nobel Quotes

Alfred Nobel believed that social changes are brought about slowly, and sometimes by indirect means. ~ Bertha Von Suttner

Good wishes alone will not ensure peace. ~ Alfred Nobel

Alfred Nobel stipulated that no distinction of race or colour will determine who received of his generosity. ~ Abdus Salam

Kant's style is so heavy that after his pure reason, the reader longs for unreasonableness. ~ Alfred Nobel

For my part, I wish all guns with their belongings and everything could be sent to hell, which is the proper place for their exhibition and use. ~ Alfred Nobel

There is a story about Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite. One day his older brother died, and a newspaper got the story wrong and printed Alfred's obituary instead. Alfred opened the paper that morning and had the unusual experience of reading his obituary while he was still alive. "Dr. Alfred Nobel, who became rich by finding ways to kill more people faster than ever before, died yesterday," the obituary began. Alfred threw down the paper. That's not how I want to be remembered, he said. That's not what's important to me, he said, and right then and there he decided to throw his entire fortune into rewarding people for bettering this world and bringing it closer to peace. ~ Alan A. Lew

I can forgive Alfred Nobel for having invented dynamite, but only a fiend in human form could have invented the Nobel Prize. ~ George Bernard Shaw

I have not the slightest pretension to call my verses poetry; I write now and then for no other purpose than to relieve depression or to improve my English. ~ Alfred Nobel

Lawyers have to make a living, and can only do so by inducing people to believe that a straight line is crooked. ~ Alfred Nobel

Dynamite, which was invented in 1867 by Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel, was a godsend for anarchists and other militants, since it was a powerful weapon that was easy to conceal. Nobel was so dismayed to see his invention used for violent purposes - he had intended it to be used for peaceful endeavors such as construction - that he left millions of dollars in his will to establish the annual Nobel Prizes, including the Nobel Peace Prize. ~ Jeffrey D. Simon

If I have a thousand ideas and only one turns out to be good, I am satisfied ~ Alfred Nobel

I am one of those who think, like Nobel, that humanity will draw more good than evil from new discoveries. ~ Marie Curie

I intend to leave after my death a large fund for the promotion of the peace idea, but I am skeptical as to its results. ~ Alfred Nobel

The only true solution would be a convention under which all the governments would bind themselves to defend collectively any country that was attacked. ~ Alfred Nobel

It is my express wish that in awarding the prizes no consideration be given to the nationality of the candidates, but that the most worthy shall receive the prize, whether he be Scandinavian or not. ~ Alfred Nobel

I am a misanthrope, but exceedingly benevolent; I am very cranky, and am a super-idealist ... I can digest philosophy better than food. ~ Alfred Nobel

The truthful man is usually a liar. ~ Alfred Nobel

Alfred Nobel was much concerned, as are we all, with the tangible benefits we hope for and expect from physiological and medical research, and the Faculty of the Caroline Institute has ever been alert to recognize practical benefits. ~ Haldan Keffer Hartline

Justice is to be found only in imagination. ~ Alfred Nobel

I would not leave anything to a man of action as he would be tempted to give up work; on the other hand, I would like to help dreamers as they find it difficult to get on in life. ~ Alfred Nobel

The fact that Science walks forward on two feet, namely theory and experiment, is nowhere better illustrated than in the two fields for slight contributions to which you have done me the great honour of awarding the the Nobel Prize in Physics for the year 1923. Sometimes it is one foot that is put forward first, sometimes the other, but continuous progress is only made by the use of both - by theorizing and then testing, or by finding new relations in the process of experimenting and then bringing the theoretical foot up and pushing it on beyond, and so on in unending alterations. ~ Robert Andrews Millikan

My co-winners, Peter Diamond and Christopher Pissarides, and I wish to thank the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and the Nobel Foundation for this very great honor. We each feel privileged and humbled to be named the winners of the 2010 Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel. ~ Dale T. Mortensen

When I was young my Father used to tell me that the two most worthwhile pursuits in life were the pursuit of truth and of beauty and I believe that Alfred Nobel must have felt much the same when he gave these prizes for literature and the sciences. ~ Frederick Sanger

A recluse without books and ink is already in life a dead man. ~ Alfred Nobel

Lying is the greatest of all sins. ~ Alfred Nobel

On the day when two army corps may mutually annihilate each other in a second, probably all civilized nations will recoil with horror and disband their troops. ~ Alfred Nobel

The day when two army corps can annihilate each other in one second, all civilized nations, it is to be hoped, will recoil from war and discharge their troops. ~ Alfred Nobel

It can even be thought that radium could become very dangerous in criminal hands, and here the question can be raised whether mankind benefits from knowing the secrets of Nature, whether it is ready to profit from it or whether this knowledge will not be harmful for it. The example of the discoveries of Nobel is characteristic, as powerful explosives have enabled man to do wonderful work. They are also a terrible means of destruction in the hands of great criminals who lead the peoples towards war. I am one of those who believe with Nobel that mankind will derive more good than harm from the new discoveries. ~ Pierre Curie

Nature is man's teacher. She unfolds her treasures to his search, unseals his eye, illumes his mind, and purifies his heart; an influence breathes from all the sights and sounds of her existence. ~ Alfred Nobel

Hope is nature's veil for hiding truth's nakedness. ~ Alfred Nobel

My dynamite will sooner lead to peace than a thousand world conventions. As soon as men will find that in one instant, whole armies can be utterly destroyed, they surely will abide by golden peace. ~ Alfred Nobel

Thoughts
thoughts. Are they not mine?
I think, I write, I type.
Thoughts. Are they wise?
Let truth be told in words, compiled together, create a page, a book.
Thoughts. Are they master piece?
Is it a prize winner? ... An Alfred Nobel?
Thoughts. Are they not mine?
Gift of God?
they are not mine. ~ Edna Stewart

And this is the ultimate lesson that our knowledge of the mode of transmission of typhus has taught us: Man carries on his skin a parasite, the louse. Civilization rids him of it. Should man regress, should he allow himself to resemble a primitive beast, the louse begins to multiply again and treats man as he deserves, as a brute beast. This conclusion would have endeared itself to the warm heart of Alfred Nobel. My contribution to it makes me feel less unworthy of the honour which you have conferred upon me in his name. ~ Charles Nicolle

Alfred Nobel really understood very well the necessary supra-natural character of the human enterprise. ~ Charles H. Townes

A heart can no more be forced to love than a stomach can be forced to digest food by persuasion. ~ Alfred Nobel

For me writing biographies is impossible, unless they are brief and concise, and these are, I feel, the most eloquent. ~ Alfred Nobel

I regard large inherited wealth as a misfortune, which merely serves to dull men's faculties. A man who possesses great wealth should, therefore, allow only a small portion to descend to his relatives. Even if he has children, I consider it a mistake to hand over to them considerable sums of money beyond what is necessary for their education. To do so merely encourages laziness and impedes the healthy development of the individual's capacity to make an independent position for himself. ~ Alfred Nobel

Second to agriculture, humbug is the biggest industry of our age. ~ Alfred Nobel

To his sister-in-law: What a contrast between us! You live a warm and glowing life, surrounded by loved ones whom you care for and who care for you; you are anchored in contentment. I drift about without rudder or compass, a wreck on the sea of life; I have no memories to cheer me, no pleasant illusions of the future to comfort me, or about me to satisfy my vanity. I have no family to furnish the only kind of survival that concerns us, no friends for the wholesome development of my affections, or enemies for my malice. ~ Alfred Nobel

When in the down I sink my head,
Sleep, Death's twin-brother, times my breath;
Sleep, Death's twin-brother, knows not Death,
Nor can I dream of thee as dead: ~ Alfred Tennyson

Evolution endowed us with intuition only for those aspects of physics that had survival value for our distant ancestors, such as the parabolic orbits of flying rocks (explaining our penchant for baseball). A cavewoman thinking too hard about what matter is ultimately made of might fail to notice the tiger sneaking up behind and get cleaned right out of the gene pool. Darwin's theory thus makes the testable prediction that whenever we use technology to glimpse reality beyond the human scale, our evolved intuition should break down. We've repeatedly tested this prediction, and the results overwhelmingly support Darwin. At high speeds, Einstein realized that time slows down, and curmudgeons on the Swedish Nobel committee found this so weird that they refused to give him the Nobel Prize for his relativity theory. At low temperatures, liquid helium can flow upward. At high temperatures, colliding particles change identity; to me, an electron colliding with a positron and turning into a Z-boson feels about as intuitive as two colliding cars turning into a cruise ship. On microscopic scales, particles schizophrenically appear in two places at once, leading to the quantum conundrums mentioned above. On astronomically large scales… weirdness strikes again: if you intuitively understand all aspects of black holes [then you] should immediately put down this book and publish your findings before someone scoops you on the Nobel Prize for quantum gravity… [also,] the leading theory for wha ~ Max Tegmark

My heart, still full of her,
traveled over her face, and found her there no more ...
I had thought to myself that a woman unknown
had adopted by chance that voice and those eyes
and I let the chilly statue pass
looking athe skies ~ Alfred De Musset

It still amazes me how many musicians aren't really interested in engaging with their audience at all. Alfred Brendel, a pianist for whom I have the greatest respect, has described performance as a sacred communion between the artist and the composer. But what about the audience? Music is communication, a two-way street. ~ Charles Hazlewood

In words, like weeds, I'll wrap me o'er, Like coarsest clothes against the cold ~ Alfred Lord Tennyson

You must wake and call me early, call me early, mother dear; To-morrow'll be the happiest time of all the glad New Year,- Of all the glad New Year, mother, the maddest, merriest day; For I'm to be Queen o' the May, mother, I'm to be queen o' the May. ~ Alfred Lord Tennyson

Doth Nature draw me, 'tis because, Unto my seeming, there doth lurk A lawlessness about her laws, More mood than purpose in her work. ~ Alfred Austin

Let me tell you this, Hastings. She would never forgive me if I let Alfred Inglethorp, her husband, be arrested now - when a word from me could save him! ~ Agatha Christie

Despite the earnest belief of most of his fans, Einstein did not win his Nobel Prize for the theory of relativity, special or general. He won for explaining a strange effect in quantum mechanics, the photoelectric effect. His solution provided the first real evidence that quantum mechanics wasn't a crude stopgap for justifying anomalous experiments, but actually corresponds to reality. And the fact that Einstein came up with it is ironic for two reasons. One, as he got older and crustier, Einstein came to distrust quantum mechanics. Its statistical and deeply probabilistic nature sounded too much like gambling to him, and it prompted him to object that "God does not play dice with the universe." He was wrong, and it's too bad that most people have never heard the rejoinder by Niels Bohr: "Einstein! Stop telling God what to do. ~ Sam Kean

Whatever you might say the object "is", well it is not. ~ Alfred Korzybski

And malt does more than Milton can To justify the ways of God to man. ~ Alfred Edward Housman

What a frightful weapon is human thought! It is our defense and our safeguard, the most precious gift that God has made us. It is ours and it obeys us; we may launch it forth into space, but, once outside of our feeble brains, it is gone; we can no longer control it. ~ Alfred De Musset

I seldom think when I take a picture. My eyes and fingers react - click. But first, it's most important to decide on the angle at which your photograph is to be taken. ~ Alfred Eisenstaedt

So the idea was that, some catastrophic event had happened. There was a long dark age and then out of that, 100 years ago in this world, seven barons - these men and women - rose up and formed the new society. It's a feudal world, a part feudal barons and part warlord and part mob boss and they each control a huge resource so that there's an uneasy alliance, but they all need each other. ~ Alfred Gough

Show some respect. They were your grandparents. -Batman
Just names and dusty frames on the wall to me. -Damien
I take exception to that. There is not a speck of dust collecting on those portraits. -Alfred ~ Peter J. Tomasi

Unless social sciences can be as creative as natural science, our new tools are not likely to be of much use to us. ~ Edgar Douglas Adrian

The United Nations is the best hope to spare humanity from the barbarity of war, from the senseless death, destruction and dislocation it brings about. ~ Alfred-Maurice De Zayas

A great soul craves occupations and recognizes obligations more in harmony with the true nobility of human nature. ~ Alfred Wesley Wishart

In the Principia Mathematica, Bertrand Russell and Alfred Whitehead attempted to give a rigorous foundation to mathematics using formal logic as their basis. They began with what they considered to be axioms, and used those to derive theorems of increasing complexity. By page 362, they had established enough to prove 1 + 1 = 2. ~ Ted Chiang

There is a great deal more to evolutionary biology than survival of the fittest - although that's all anyone seems to remember. One of Darwin's contemporaries was Alfred Russel Wallace, who had even more profound lessons about evolution - that humans are social creatures. That we coevolve with other species as part of a fabric of interwoven and interdependent life-forms. The world isn't entirely about competition and dominance. And species that cooperate with others succeed better than those who do not. That's what civilization is, cooperation." "And ~ Daniel Suarez

From the moment of birth we are immersed in action, and can only fitfully guide it by taking thought. ~ Alfred North Whitehead

I think the Nobel Prize helps for a number of reasons. Number one, if I can be frank, there is these people will feel by getting a Nobel Prize that I'm one of them, that it is possible to contribute on the world map of science and technology. And the other thing also which I'm hoping for is that the government in Egypt is willing and interested in promoting science and technology and this is an ideal time now to be able to do something. ~ Ahmed H. Zewail

his deeply ingrained belief that the rich should repay their debt to society. Throughout his life, Alfred Loomis would feel that moneymaking alone was not a satisfactory existence. ~ Jennet Conant

The greatest invention of the nineteenth century was the invention of the method of invention. ~ Alfred North Whitehead

Now that I've got this to keep me safe off the island," I said very quietly, "what's to stop me from having Alfred drop you into a cell right this second, and solving my problems myself?" "I am," Mab said. She gave me a very small, very chill smile, and held up her finger. There was a tiny droplet of my blood upon it, scarlet against her pale skin. ~ Jim Butcher

There is ever the prior question of plain duty, with which nothing else, however tempting or promising of success, can come into conflict; and such seasons may be only those when our faith and patience are put on trial, so as to bring it clearly before us, whether or not, quite irrespective of all else, we are content to leave everything in the hands of God. ~ Alfred Edersheim

One of the things that everybody knows about space travel but never mentions is its aphrodisiac quality. ~ Alfred Bester

A profession that we are a nation "under God" is identical, for Establishment Clause purposes, to a profession that we are a nation "under Jesus," a nation "under Vishnu," a nation "under Zeus," or a nation "under no god," because none of these professions can be neutral with respect to religion. ~ Alfred Goodwin

PROCESS PHILOSOPHY, a school greatly influenced by Alfred North Whitehead, holds that mind and brain are manifestations of a single reality, one that is in constant flux. It thus is compatible with classical Buddhist philosophy, which views clear and penetrating awareness of change and impermanence (anicca in Pali) as the essence of insight. Thus, as Whitehead put it, "The reality is the process," and it is a process made up of vital transient "drops of experience, complex, and interdependent." This view is strikingly consistent with recent developments in quantum physics. ~ Jeffrey M. Schwartz

This is Armageddon ... Flowering Monstrosity. Tell me what you see." "There's ~ Alfred Bester

So graphene makes an extremely strong, tough material. At the same time, because it is only one atomic layer thick, a graphene sheet is light and flexible. In explaining their 2010 award, the Nobel committee mentioned that a one-square meter graphene hammocck could support a cat, while weighing about as much as one of the cat's whiskers. ~ Frank Wilczek

It is the patriotic duty of every man to lie for his country. ~ Alfred Adler

Nobel prizes are very special prizes, and it would be great to get one. ~ Craig Venter

Wish best for those who wish you the worst, for the worst of wishes need it most". ~ Alfred H. Scarborough

Here at the quiet limit of the world. ~ Alfred Tennyson

Half a league, half a league,
Half a league onward,
All in the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred. ~ Alfred Lord Tennyson

Earth is dry to the center,
But spring, a new comer,
A spring rich and strange,
Shall make the winds blow
Round and round,
Thro' and thro' ,
Here and there,
Till the air
And the ground
Shall be fill'd with life anew. ~ Alfred Lord Tennyson

For why is all around us here As if some lesser god had made the world, But had not force to shape it as he would? Alfred Lord Tennyson: Idylls of the King ~ K.H. Rennie

A glimpse into the world proves that horror is nothing other than reality. ~ Alfred Hitchcock

No matter what his rank or position may be, the lover of books is the richest and the happiest of the children of men. ~ John Alfred Langford

=The Burial of Love= His eyes in eclipse, Pale cold his lips, The light of his hopes unfed, Mute his tongue, His bow unstrung With the tears he hath shed, Backward drooping his graceful head. Love is dead; His last arrow sped; He hath not another dart; Go--carry him to his dark deathbed; Bury him in the cold, cold heart-- Love is dead. ~ Alfred Tennyson

Photographers don't need to be aggressive. Some are. Henry Benson is aggressive - but then he's from Fleet Street. If you can talk to people, you don't need to push people around. ~ Alfred Eisenstaedt

What can a state institution teach us? In what way can I be reformed by a penal colony and you by, say, Russian TV Channel 1? In his Nobel lecture, Joseph Brodsky said, 'The more substantial an individual's aesthetic experience is, the sounder his taste, the sharper his moral focus, the freer - though not necessarily the happier - he is.' We in Russia once again find ourselves in a situation where resistance, especially aesthetic resistance, becomes the only viable moral choice as well as a civic duty." Nadya ~ Masha Gessen

We cannot be too cautious, Hannelore. Just because someone knocks on the door doesn't mean you have to open it. Sometimes, sweet girl, there are wolves at the door. If we are not careful, they might eat us. ~ Ruta Sepetys

I am mindful that scientific achievement is rooted in the past, is cultivated to full stature by many contemporaries and flourishes only in favorable environment. No individual is alone responsible for a single stepping stone along the path of progress, and where the path is smooth progress is most rapid. In my own work this has been particularly true. ~ Ernest O. Lawrence

Routine is the god of every social system; it is the seventh heaven of business, the essential component in the success of every factory, the ideal of every statesman. The social machine should run like clockwork. ~ Alfred North Whitehead

It is ironic that Keynesianism originated as a weapon to combat depression, but became universally accepted and "successful" only during (and because of!) the postwar expansion. At the first sign of renewed world recession, Keynesian theory has proved itself to be a snare and a delusion that has gone into immediate bankruptcy. The resulting "post-Keynesian synthesis" is also the theoretical reason for the reactionary exhumation of the simplistic, neoclassical, and monetarist economic theory of the 1920s. This revival of old theory is highlighted by the award of Nobel prizes in economics to Friedrich von Hayek, whose theoretical work was done before the Great Depression, and Milton Friedman, whose lone voice echoed in the wilderness until the new world economic crisis put his unpopular and antipopulist theories on the agenda of business board rooms and government cabinet rooms in one capitalist country after another. The real reason for the recent interest in fifty-year-old theories is that capital now wants them to legitimize its attack on the welfare state and "unproductive" expenditures on social services, which capital claims to need for "productive" investment in industry, including armaments. ~ Andre Gunder Frank

The first proponent of cortical memory networks on a major scale was neither a neuroscientist nor a computer scientist but .. a Viennes economist: Friedrich von Hayek (1899-1992). A man of exceptionally broad knowledge and profound insight into the operation of complex systems, Hayek applied such insight with remarkable success to economics (Nobel Prize, 1974), sociology, political science, jurisprudence, evolutionary theory, psychology, and brain science (Hayek, 1952). ~ Joaquin Fuster