Nobel Prize Speech Quotes

... in daily speech, where we don't stop to consider every word, we all use phrases like "the ordinary world," "ordinary life," "the ordinary course of events" ... But in the language of poetry, where every word is weighed, nothing is usual or normal. Not a single stone and not a single cloud above it. Not a single day and not a single night after it. And above all, not a single existence, not anyone's existence in this world. ~ Wisława Szymborska

Physicist Isador Isaac Rabi, who won a Nobel Prize for inventing a technique that permitted scientists to probe the structure of atoms and molecules in the 1930s, attributed his success to the way his mother used to greet him when he came home from school each day. "Did you ask any good questions today, Isaac?" she would say. ~ Richard Saul Wurman

It's a pity that nobody has found an exploding black hole. If they had, I would have won a Nobel prize. ~ Stephen Hawking

Now that Obama is at war in a 3rd country, does that mean he has to give back his Nobel Peace Prize? ~ Mort Sahl

I got my Nobel Prize for my lab work. ~ Joshua Lederberg

My countrymen have the right to shake my hand and talk to me if they so wish. Don't forget that their support and their reading of my works is what brought me the Nobel prize. ~ Naguib Mahfouz

I once interviewed Robert Solow, winner of the 1987 Nobel Prize in Economics and a noted baseball enthusiast. I asked if it bothered him that he received less money for winning the Nobel Prize than Roger Clemens, who was pitching for the Red Sox at the time, earned in a single season. "No," Solow said. "There are a lot of good economists, but there is only one Roger Clemens." That is how economists think. ~ Charles Wheelan

Christians believe, as is reported in the New Testament scriptures, that Jesus of Nazareth healed 10 men with leprosy. It sounds like an astounding feat, but compare that to Jacinto Convit who saved thousands of lives when he developed the vaccine that protects us from it. In 1988, Convit was nominated for a Nobel Prize in Medicine for his anti-leprosy vaccine. So, while the promise of Jesus' healing power is a centerpiece of the Christian myth, the demigod's results leave something to be desired when compared to the rigor of man's scientific inquiry. ~ David G. McAfee

Some social phobics find even positive attention to be aversive. Think of the young child who bursts into tears when guests sing "Happy Birthday" to her at a party - or of Elfriede Jelinek afraid to pick up her Nobel Prize. Social attention - even positive, supportive attention - activates the neurocircuitry of fear. This makes sense from an evolutionary perspective. Calling positive attention to yourself can incite jealousy or generate new rivalries. ~ Scott Stossel

Everything that's supposedly caused by stress, I tell people there's a Nobel Prize there if you find out the real cause. ~ Barry Marshall

I want to see a game designer nominated for a Nobel Prize. ~ Jane McGonigal

If I could explain it to the average person, I wouldn't have been worth the Nobel Prize. ~ Richard P. Feynman

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

At the end of the walkway is a cat. It struts with arrogance. You'd think it just won the Nobel Prize. But it didn't. Know why? Because it's a freakin' cat. In case you mossed the memo, I. Hate. Cats. I loathe them. They're built with creepy little teeth and finger blades. I don't know about you, but I'll pass on that freak show. ~ Victoria Scott

Churchill drank twice what I did if you could believe the accounts and he had just been awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. I was simply trying to step up my drinking to a reasonable amount when I might win the Prize myself; who knows? ~ Ernest Hemingway,

The prestige of the Nobel Prize is due to many causes, but in particular to its twofold idealistic and international character: idealistic in that it has been designed for works of lofty inspiration; international in that it is awarded after the production of different countries has been minutely studied and the intellectual balance sheet of the whole world has been drawn up. Free from all other considerations and ignoring any but intellectual values, the judges have deliberately taken their place in what the philosophers have called a community of the mind. ~ Henri Bergson

It was one of the great pleasures of my life to donate the entire sum of the Nobel Prize, in memory of my sister Ruth Blobel, to the restoration of Dresden. ~ Gunter Blobel

I came to speak ill of Swedish engineering, and so diddled myself out of a Nobel Prize. ~ Kurt Vonnegut

In the first place, the preparation of the Nobel lecture which I am to give has shown me, even more clearly than I knew before, how many others share with me, often, indeed, have anticipated me, in the discoveries for which you have awarded me the prize. ~ Frederick Soddy

A writer, I think, is someone who pays attention to the world.
[Speech upon being awarded the Friedenspreis des Deutschen Buchhandels (Peace Prize of the German Book Trade), Frankfurt Book Fair, October 12, 2003] ~ Susan Sontag

The letters dance before my eyes. Who am I? ~ Patrick Modiano

Make-up artists should hereby get the Nobel prize for adding to human happiness. And so should hairdressers. And so should Luke. ~ Sophie Kinsella

I tried to explain to her the significance of the great poet, but without much success, The Waste Land not figuring very largely in Mam's scheme of things. "The thing is," I said finally, "he won the Nobel Prize." "Well," she said, with that unerring grasp of inessentials which is the prerogative of mothers, "I'm not surprised. It was a beautiful overcoat. ~ Alan Bennett

I should pay attention to what I know and not talk more just because I won a Nobel Prize. ~ Jean Tirole

There has been considerable comment over the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to a soldier. I am afraid this does not seem as remarkable to me as it quite evidently appears to others. I know a great deal of the horrors and tragedies of war ... The cost of war in human lives is constantly spread before me, written neatly in many ledgers whose columns are gravestones. I am deeply moved to find some means or method of avoiding another calamity of war. ~ George C. Marshall

My research, even before 1972, moved in directions beyond those cited for the Nobel Memorial Prize. Most of it, in one way or another, deals with information as an economic variable, both as to its production and as to its use. ~ Kenneth Joseph Arrow

The Nobel Prize is an honor unique in the world in having found its way into the hearts and minds of simple people everywhere. It casts a light of peace and reason upon us all; and for that I am especially grateful. ~ George Wald

A Pulitzer Prize is awaiting the journalist who can find an American who dies of hunger, and probably the Nobel Prize for literature as well. ~ Tom Bethell

I thought of my father and felt a deep sorrow that he should no longer be alive, and that I could not go to him and tell him that I had been awarded the Nobel Prize. I knew that no one would have been happier than he to hear this. ~ Selma Lagerlof

Nobel Prize in Literature [10w]
Only fools and Swedes equate literary prizes with literary merit. ~ Beryl Dov

Ernest Rutherford's 1908 Nobel Prize in Chemistry wasn't given for the nuclear power station - he wouldn't have survived that long - it was given for showing how interesting atomic physics could be. ~ Andre Geim

I must confess that if I had been consulted whether to establish a Nobel Prize in economics, I should have decidedly advised against it. ~ Friedrich August Von Hayek

If you're from New Jersey," Nathan had said, "and you write thirty books, and you win the Nobel Prize, and you live to be white-haired and ninety-five, it's highly unlikely but not impossible that after your death they'll decide to name a rest stop for you on the Jersey Turnpike. And so, long after you're gone, you may indeed be remembered, but mostly by small children, in the backs of cars, when they lean forward and tell their parents, 'Stop, please, stop at Zuckerman - I have to make a pee.' For a New Jersey novelist that's as much immortality as it's realistic to hope for. ~ Philip Roth

The Nobel Prize is not very important for the winners - they are usually pretty successful people already. But it is valuable as a way of drawing the public's attention to important work in economics. ~ Eric Maskin

But most of the time when I wear them, I don't know, I'm kind of hoping - foolishly, probably - that people will read it, get the message, change their lives for the better, even if it's only in the smallest of ways, and make the world a better place." Knox was still grinning as he buttered his toast. "So you're saying your shirts are like a butterfly effect?" "Pretty much, yeah. And when they hand me my Nobel Peace Prize in fifty years for changing the world, one snarky shirt at a time, I'm going to wave it in your face and chant 'Told ya so' about a million times. ~ Nicole Williams

It seems to me that the Swedish Academy of Science may be qualifying for the Nobel Peace Prize. It recognises no nationality; it discourages unworthy national feeling and prejudice. ~ Charles Glover Barkla

The Nobel Prizes are much more than awards to scholars; they are a celebration of civilization, of mankind, and of what makes humans unique - that is their intellect from which springs creativity. ~ Stanley B. Prusiner

That work led to the emergence of the recombinant DNA technology thereby providing a major tool for analyzing mammalian gene structure and function and formed the basis for me receiving the 1980 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. ~ Paul Berg

Albert Szent-Györgyi, a Hungarian physiologist who won the Nobel Prize in 1937 for the discovery of vitamin C, once offered the opinion that "life is nothing but an electron looking for a place to rest. ~ Sean Carroll

When you look at the light bulb above you, you remember Thomas Alva Edison. When the telephone bell rings, you remember Alexander Graham Bell. Marie Curie was the first woman to win the Nobel Prize. When you see the blue sky, you think of Sir C.V. Raman. ~ A. P. J. Abdul Kalam

The reason why I'm here today is to explain why I am running and what I will do if you give me the honor and the privilege of representing you in the United States Senate. Now I'm running for the United State Senate for a simple reason, and that is ... I want to win a Nobel Peace prize. ~ Marco Rubio