Marie Curie Quotes
Polish - Scientist November 7, 1867 - July 4, 1934

You cannot hope to build a better world without improving the individuals. To that end, each of us must work for his own improvement and, at the same time, share a general responsibility for all humanity, our particular duty being to aid those to whom we think we can be most useful.
Marie Curie

Life is not easy for any of us. But what of that? We must have perseverance and above all confidence in ourselves. We must believe that we are gifted for something and that this thing must be attained.
Marie Curie

Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood. Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less.
Marie Curie

Be less curious about people and more curious about ideas.
Marie Curie

I was taught that the way of progress was neither swift nor easy.
Marie Curie

I am among those who think that science has great beauty.
Marie Curie

A scientist in his laboratory is not a mere technician: he is also a child confronting natural phenomena that impress him as though they were fairy tales.
Marie Curie

When radium was discovered, no one knew that it would prove useful in hospitals. The work was one of pure science. And this is a proof that scientific work must not be considered from the point of view of the direct usefulness of it.
Marie Curie

One never notices what has been done; one can only see what remains to be done.
Marie Curie

All my life through, the new sights of Nature made me rejoice like a child.
Marie Curie
Life, Nature, Child
I am one of those who think like Nobel, that humanity will draw more good than evil from new discoveries.
Marie Curie
Good, Evil, I Am
There are sadistic scientists who hurry to hunt down errors instead of establishing the truth.
Marie Curie
Truth, Down, Errors
If I see anything vital around me, it is precisely that spirit of adventure, which seems indestructible and is akin to curiosity.
Marie Curie
Adventure, Curiosity, Me
I was only fifteen when I finished my high-school studies, always having held first rank in my class. The fatigue of growth and study compelled me to take almost a year's rest in the country. I then returned to my father in Warsaw, hoping to teach in the free schools.
Marie Curie

All my mind was centered on my studies, which, especially at the beginning, were difficult. In fact, I was insufficiently prepared to follow the physical science course at the Sorbonne, for, despite all my efforts, I had not succeeded in acquiring in Poland a preparation as complete as that of the French students following the same course.
Marie Curie

I have no dress except the one I wear every day. If you are going to be kind enough to give me one, please let it be practical and dark so that I can put it on afterwards to go to the laboratory.
Marie Curie

In science, we must be interested in things, not in persons.
Marie Curie

In 1903, I finished my doctor's thesis and obtained the degree. At the end of the same year, the Nobel prize was awarded jointly to Becquerel, my husband and me for the discovery of radioactivity and new radioactive elements.
Marie Curie

Sometimes I had to spend a whole day mixing a boiling mass with a heavy iron rod nearly as large as myself. I would be broken with fatigue at the day's end. Other days, on the contrary, the work would be a most minute and delicate fractional crystallization, in the effort to concentrate the radium.
Marie Curie

Unknown in Paris, I was lost in the great city, but the feeling of living there alone, taking care of myself without any aid, did not at all depress me. If sometimes I felt lonesome, my usual state of mind was one of calm and great moral satisfaction.
Marie Curie

Pierre Curie came to see me and showed a simple and sincere sympathy with my student life. Soon he caught the habit of speaking to me of his dream of an existence consecrated entirely to scientific research, and he asked me to share that life.
Marie Curie

We should not allow it to be believed that all scientific progress can be reduced to mechanisms, machines, gearings, even though such machinery also has its beauty. Neither do I believe that the spirit of adventure runs any risk of disappearing in our world.
Marie Curie

My experiments proved that the radiation of uranium compounds can be measured with precision under determined conditions and that this radiation is an atomic property of the element of uranium.
Marie Curie

During the course of my research, I had had occasion to examine not only simple compounds, salts and oxides, but also a great number of minerals.
Marie Curie

I have frequently been questioned, especially by women, of how I could reconcile family life with a scientific career. Well, it has not been easy.
Marie Curie

After all, science is essentially international, and it is only through lack of the historical sense that national qualities have been attributed to it.
Marie Curie

During the year 1894, Pierre Curie wrote me letters that seem to me admirable in their form. No one of them was very long, for he had the habit of concise expression, but all were written in a spirit of sincerity and with an evident anxiety to make the one he desired as a companion know him as he was.
Marie Curie

The death of my husband, coming immediately after the general knowledge of the discoveries with which his name is associated, was felt by the public, and especially by the scientific circles, to be a national misfortune.
Marie Curie

I tried out various experiments described in treatises on physics and chemistry, and the results were sometimes unexpected. At times, I would be encouraged by a little unhoped-for success; at others, I would be in the deepest despair because of accidents and failures resulting from my inexperience.
Marie Curie

In 1906, just as we were definitely giving up the old shed laboratory where we had been so happy, there came the dreadful catastrophe which took my husband away from me and left me alone to bring up our children and, at the same time, to continue our work of research.
Marie Curie

I met Pierre Curie for the first time in the spring of the year 1894... A Polish physicist whom I knew, and who was a great admirer of Pierre Curie, one day invited us together to spend the evening with himself and his wife.
Marie Curie

In chemical terms, radium differs little from barium; the salts of these two elements are isomorphic, while those of radium are usually less soluble than the barium salts.
Marie Curie

The first experiments on the biological properties of radium were successfully made in France, with samples from our laboratory, while my husband was living.
Marie Curie


C. V. Raman Quotes
Indian - Physicist November 7, 1888 - November 21, 1970

We must teach science in the mother tongue. Otherwise, science will become a highbrow activity. It will not be an activity in which all people can participate.
C. V. Raman

The whole edifice of modern physics is built up on the fundamental hypothesis of the atomic or molecular constitution of matter.
C. V. Raman

It is not often that idealism of student days finds adequate opportunity for expression in the later life of manhood.
C. V. Raman

The essence of science is independent thinking, hard work, and not equipment. When I got my Nobel Prize, I had spent hardly 200 rupees on my equipment.
C. V. Raman

I would like to tell the young men and women before me not to lose hope and courage. Success can only come to you by courageous devotion to the task lying in front of you.
C. V. Raman

In the history of science, we often find that the study of some natural phenomenon has been the starting point in the development of a new branch of knowledge.
C. V. Raman

A voyage to Europe in the summer of 1921 gave me the first opportunity of observing the wonderful blue opalescence of the Mediterranean Sea. It seemed not unlikely that the phenomenon owed its origin to the scattering of sunlight by the molecules of the water.
C. V. Raman

It is generally believed that it is the students who derive benefit by working under the guidance of a professor. In reality, the professor benefits equally by his association with gifted students working under him.
C. V. Raman

I strongly believe that fundamental science cannot be driven by instructional, industrial, governmental or military pressures. This was the reason why I decided, as far as possible, not to accept money from the government.
C. V. Raman

The fundamental importance of the subject of molecular diffraction came first to be recognized through the theoretical work of the late Lord Rayleigh on the blue light of the sky, which he showed to be the result of the scattering of sunlight by the gases of the atmosphere.
C. V. Raman

We need a spirit of victory, a spirit that will carry us to our rightful place under the sun, a spirit which can recognize that we, as inheritors of a proud civilization, are entitled to our rightful place on this planet. If that indomitable spirit were to arise, nothing can hold us from achieving our rightful destiny.
C. V. Raman

When we consider the fact that nearly three-quarters of the surface of the globe is covered by oceanic water, we begin to realise that the molecular scattering of light in liquids may possess an astronomical significance, in fact contribute in an important degree to the observed albedo of the earth.
C. V. Raman

To an observer situated on the moon or on one of the planets, the most noticeable feature on the surface of our globe would no doubt be the large areas covered by oceanic water. The sunlit face of the earth would appear to shine by the light diffused back into space from the land and water-covered areas.
C. V. Raman

We have, I think, developed an inferiority complex. I think what is needed in India today is the destruction of that defeatist spirit.
C. V. Raman

I have always thought it a great privilege to have as my colleague in the Palit Chair of Chemistry such a distinguished pioneer in scientific research and education in Bengal as Sir Prafulla Ray. It has been invariably my experience that I could count on his cooperation and sympathy in every matter concerning my scientific work.
C. V. Raman

I feel it is unnatural and immoral to try to teach science to children in a foreign language They will know facts, but they will miss the spirit.
C. V. Raman

It seemed, indeed, that the study of light-scattering might carry one into the deepest problems of physics and chemistry, and it was this belief which led to the subject becoming the main theme of our activities at Calcutta from that time onwards.
C. V. Raman

It will soon be 25 years from the date of publication of my first research work. That the scientific aspirations kindled by that early work did not suffer extinction has been due entirely to the opportunities provided for me by the great city of Calcutta.
C. V. Raman

It was my great good fortune, while I was still a student at college, to have possessed a copy of an English translation of his great work 'The Sensations of Tone.' As is well known, this was one of Helmholtz's masterpieces.
C. V. Raman

In the first English class I attended, Prof. E. H. Elliot, addressing me, asked if I really belonged to the Junior B. A. class, and I had to answer him in the affirmative. He then proceeded to inquire how old I was.
C. V. Raman

All the instruments of percussion known to European science are essentially nonmusical and can only be tolerated in open air music or in large orchestras where a little noise more or less makes no difference.
C. V. Raman

Is there any more encouraging sign than to see an Indian, who has never been to a university, like our friend Mr. Asutosh Dey here, for example, carrying out original work and finding it recognized by the foremost societies of the world?
C. V. Raman

Towards the end of February 1928, I took the decision of using brilliant monochromatic illumination obtained by the aid of the commercially available mercury arcs sealed in quartz tubes.
C. V. Raman

It was the late Dr. Mahendra Lal Sircar who, by founding the Indian Association for the Cultivation of Science, made it possible for the scientific aspirations of my early years to continue burning brightly.
C. V. Raman

From Calcutta has gone forth a living stream of knowledge in many branches of study. It is inspiring to think of the long succession of scholars, both Indian and European, who have lived in this city, made it their own, and given it of their best.
C. V. Raman