“People ask me often (was) the Nobel Prize the thing you were aiming for all your life? And I say that would be crazy. Nobody would aim for a Nobel Prize because, if you didn’t get it, your whole life would be wasted. What we were aiming at was getting people well, and the satisfaction of that is much greater than any prize you can get.”

— Gertrude B. Elion

Gertrude Elion https://www.famousscientists.org/gertrude-b-elion/

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 7, 2024. History

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Gertrude B. Elion 3

American biochemist and pharmacologist 1918–1999

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“You can actually do extremely well out of not getting a Nobel prize,”

Jocelyn Bell Burnell (1943) British scientist

Beautiful Minds (2010)
Context: You can actually do extremely well out of not getting a Nobel prize, and I have had so many prizes, and so many honours, and so many awards, that actually, I think I've had far more fun than if I'd got a Nobel Prize - which is a bit flash in the pan: You get it, you have a fun week, and it's all over, and nobody gives you anything else after that, cos they feel they can't match it.

“Maybe we need to change who gets the Nobel Peace Prize, and when. Because so many people have won the prize and they've benefitted from all of its prestige, and then they've gone on to not be peaceful. Like, maybe we should only give the Nobel Peace Prize to people after their career is over and they've passed away, right? It's at the end. We can call it the "Rest in Peace Prize." Then we know you're not gonna surprise us, you're not gonna hurt anyone. Unless someone trips on your grave.”

Trevor Noah (1984) South African comedian

13 September 2017
The Daily Show
Source: Visiblee at 05:10, Violent Buddhists Target Muslims in Myanmar: The Daily Show https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J2Qq-RPYb_I, YouTube.com, 13 September 2017.

“That is the wrong question to ask…You can’t go into science thinking of a Nobel Prize. You can only go into science because you’re interested in it.”

Venkatraman Ramakrishnan (1952) Nobel prize winning American and British structural biologist

When asked how students could aim to emulate him.
Appreciate science for what it is: Venkatraman Ramakrishnan

“Now many excellent scientists in India are doing really first rate work and it should not matter when the next Indian Nobel Prize is because they are doing very good work — that is what matters and the more you have this infrastructure, with good scientists within India, eventually someone will get a Nobel Prize for work done within India.”

Venkatraman Ramakrishnan (1952) Nobel prize winning American and British structural biologist

Venki’ makes light of India link- Winner says not to treat science like cricket; league of misses grows

“I was asked the other day if I would be interested in the Nobel Prize, but I think that for me it would be an absolute catastrophe. I would certainly be interested in deserving it, but to receive it would be terrible. It would just complicate even more the problems of fame. The only thing I really regret in life is not having a daughter.”

Gabriel García Márquez (1927–2014) Colombian writer

Source: The Paris Review interview (1981), p. 339

“People who get Nobel prizes aren't necessarily the most imaginative of people. People who sometimes find a system, develop a system, do very useful work.”

Aaron Klug (1926–2018) British chemist and biophysicist

Interview, 17 June 2005 http://library.cshl.edu/oralhistory/interview/scientific-experience/women-science/aaron-rosalind-franklin/.

“Jews are one of the few ethnic groups where learning is equivalent to praising God, which brings results. One Jewish Nobel Prize winner, when asked where his passion for science came from, explained that when his friends were returning home, they were asked what the teacher was asking about today. Me, said the Nobel Prize winner, mother asked: What did you ask the teacher today? He was taught to ask, not to answer.”

Włodzimierz Ptak (1928–2019) immunologist

Borejza, Tomasz (January 2018): Trochę bakterii nie zaszkodzi https://www.tygodnikprzeglad.pl/troche-bakterii-zaszkodzi/. Przegląd (4/2018): pp. 54–55.

“I would make any sacrifice but this; twenty times I can stake my life, even my honour, but my freedom I shall never sell. Why do I prize it so much? … What am I aiming at? Nothing, absolutely nothing.”

Mikhail Lermontov book A Hero of Our Time

Referring to marriage
A Hero of Our Time (1840; rev. 1841)

“As a Nobel Prize winner I cannot but regret that the award was never given to Mark Twain, nor to Henry James, speaking only of my own countrymen. Greater writers than these also did not receive the prize. I would have been happy — happier — today if the prize had been given to that beautiful writer Isak Dinesen.”

Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) American author and journalist

As quoted in The New York Times Book Review (7 November 1954)

“I was out in the middle of Niger. And somebody just comes busting into our meeting, said, 'Nobel Peace Prize! Nobel Peace Prize!' And I'm like, "Well, yeah, wow, who won it?' And they're like, 'We did!' That was the greatest surprise in my life. And wow, wow, wow!”

David Beasley (1957) 113th Governor of South Carolina

Source: As quoted in Kate Hudson on being a World Food Programme ambassador, CBS News, (22 November 2020)

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