Quotes

  • 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.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • I was taught that the way of progress was neither swift nor easy.
  • One never notices what has been done; one can only see what remains to be done.
  • I am among those who think that science has great beauty.
  • Be less curious about people and more curious about ideas.
  • If I see anything vital around me, it is precisely that spirit of adventure, which seems indestructible and is akin to curiosity.
  • 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.
  • In science, we must be interested in things, not in persons.
  • There are sadistic scientists who hurry to hunt down errors instead of establishing the truth.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • I am one of those who think like Nobel, that humanity will draw more good than evil from new discoveries.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • The first experiments on the biological properties of radium were successfully made in France, with samples from our laboratory, while my husband was living. 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.