20th-century Nobel Laureate Quotes

Elie Wiesel

Emilio Segrè

Roald Hoffmann

Eric Maskin

Eugene Fama

George Emil Palade

Herbert Kroemer

The only place where I felt at home, on familiar ground, was the Jewish cemetery. And yet I had never set foot in it before. Children had been forbidden to enter.

If active managers win, it has to be at the expense of other active managers. And when you add them all up, the returns of active managers have to be literally zero, before costs. Then after costs, it's a big negative sign

That strategic rivalry in a long-term relationship may differ from that of a one-shot game is by now quite a familiar idea. Repeated play allows players to respond to each other's actions, and so each player must consider the reactions of his opponents in making his decision. The fear of retaliation may thus lead to outcomes that otherwise would not occur. The most dramatic expression of this phenomenon is the celebrated "Folk Theorem." An outcome that Pareto dominates the minimax point is called individually rational. The Folk Theorem asserts that any individually rational outcome can arise as a Nash equilibrium in infinitely repeated games with sufficiently little discounting.

Ultimately, progress in applications is not deterministic, but opportunistic, exploiting for new applications whatever new science and technology happen to be coming along.

Herbert Kroemer

In scientific matters there was a common language and one standard of values; in moral and political problems there were many. … Furthermore, in science there is a court of last resort, experiment, which is unavailable in human affairs.

Chemistry is positioned between the simple world of atoms and the complex nature of biological molecules and real materials.

To apply tools of science, physicians must learn to think like scientists. They must acquire technical ability, taste in evaluating experiments, and a sense of creative adventure.

Michael Stuart Brown

For a scientist, it is a unique experience to live through a period in which his field of endeavor comes to bloom — to be witness to those rare moments when the dawn of understanding finally descends upon what appeared to be confusion only a while ago — to listen to the sound of darkness crumbling.

George Emil Palade