George Wald

In fact, death seems to have been a rather late invention in evolution. One can go a long way in evolution before encountering an authentic corpse.

I have lived much of my life among molecules. They are good company. I tell my students to try to know molecules, so well that when they have some question involving molecules, they can ask themselves, What would I do if I were that molecule? I tell them, Try to feel like a molecule; and if you work hard, who knows? Some day you may get to feel like a big molecule!

Our challenge is to give what account we can of what becomes of life in the solar system, this corner of the universe that is our home; and, most of all, what becomes of men-all men, of all nations, colors, and creeds. This has become one world, a world for all men. It is only such a world that can now offer us life, and the chance to go on.

Evolution advances, not by a priori design, but by the selection of what works best out of whatever choices offer. We are the products of editing, rather than of authorship.

Nuclear weapons offer us nothing but a balance of terror, and a balance of terror is still terror.

I think if a physician wrote on a death certificate that old age was the cause of death, he'd be thrown out of the union. There is always some final event, some failure of an organ, some last attack of pneumonia, that finishes off a life. No one dies of old age.

Civilization will end within 15 or 30 years unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind.

Death seems to have been a rather late invention in evolution. One can go a long way in evolution before encountering an authentic corpse.

The thought that we're in competition with Russians or with Chinese is all a mistake, and trivial. We are one species, with a world to win.

I tell my students, with a feeling of pride that I hope they will share, that the carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen that make up ninety-nine per cent of our living substance were cooked in the deep interiors of earlier generations of dying stars. Gathered up from the ends of the universe, over billions of years, eventually they came to form, in part, the substance of our sun, its planets, and ourselves. Three billion years ago, life arose upon the earth. It is the only life in the solar system.

It's not good enough to give it tender, loving care, to supply it with breakfast foods, to buy it expensive educations. Those things don't mean anything unless this generation has a future. And we're not sure that it does.

We are the products of editing, rather than of authorship.

When you have no experience of pain, it is rather hard to experience joy.

The Vietnamese have a secret weapon. It's their willingness to die beyond our willingness to kill. In effect, they've been saying, You can kill us, but you'll have to kill a lot of us; you may have to kill all of us. And, thank heaven, we are not yet ready to do that.

I tell my students to try to know molecules, so well that when they have some question involving molecules, they can ask themselves, What would I do if I were that molecule?

The only use for an atomic bomb is to keep somebody else from using one.

Science goes from question to question; big questions, and little, tentative answers. The questions as they age grow ever broader, the answers are seen to be more limited.

A scientist lives with all reality. There is nothing better. To know reality is to accept it, and eventually to love it.

The only use for an atomic bomb is to keep somebody else from using one. It can give us no protection - only the doubtful satisfaction of retaliation...