Marie Curie Quotes

29 Sourced Quotes

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.
Instructions regarding a proposed gift of a wedding dress for her marriage to Pierre in July 1895

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

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

Marie Curie
I am among those who think that science has great beauty. A scientist in his laboratory is not only a technician: he is also a child placed before natural phenomena which impress him like a fairy tale. 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. If I see anything vital around me, it is precisely that spirit of adventure, which seems indestructible and is akin to curiosity.

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

Marie Curie
The older one gets, the more one feels that the present moment must be enjoyed, comparable to a state of grace.

Marie Curie
A great discovery does not leap completely achieved from the brain of the scientist, as Minerva sprang, all panoplied, from the head of Jupiter; it is the fruit of accumulated preliminary work.

Marie Curie
There are sadistic scientists who hurry to hunt down errors instead of establishing the truth.

Marie Curie
I am one of those who think like Nobel, that humanity will draw more good than evil from new discoveries.

Marie Curie
All my life through, the new sights of Nature made me rejoice like a child.

Marie Curie
"The moment of discovery" does not always exist: the scientist's work is too tenuous, too divided, for the certainty of success to crackle out suddenly in the midst of his laborious toil like a stroke of lightening, dazzling him by its fire.

Marie Curie
We have here an entirely separate kind of chemistry for which the current tool we use is the electrometer, not the balance, and which we might well call the chemistry of the imponderable.

Marie Curie
I must remark here that the bold interpretation of the relationship existing between radium and helium rests entirely upon the certitude that radium has the same claim to be a chemical element as have all the other known elements, and that there can be no question of regarding it to be a molecular combination of helium with another element.

Marie Curie
My husband and I were so closely united by our affection and our common work that we passed nearly all of our time together.

Marie Curie
Radium is not to enrich any one. It is an element; it is for all people.

Marie Curie
It is impossible. It would be contrary to scientific spirit.... Physicists always publish their researches completely. If our discovery has a commercial future, that is an accident by which we must not profit. And radium is going to be of use in treating disease... It seems to me impossible to take advantage of that.

Marie Curie
It is my earnest desire that some of you should carry on this scientific work and keep for your ambition the determination to make a permanent contribution to science.

Marie Curie
We cannot hope to build a better world without improving the individual. Toward this end, each of us must work for his own highest development, accepting at the same time his share of responsibility in the general life of humanity — our particular duty being to aid those to whom we think we can be most useful.

Marie Curie
It was like a new world opened to me, the world of science, which I was at last permitted to know in all liberty.

Marie Curie
We must not forget that 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. It must be done for itself, for the beauty of science, and then there is always the chance that a scientific discovery may become like the radium a benefit for humanity.

Marie Curie
Sometimes my courage fails me and I think I ought to stop working, live in the country and devote myself to gardening. But I am held by a thousand bonds, and I don't know when I shall be able to arrange things otherwise. Nor do I know whether, even by writing scientific books, I could live without the laboratory.

Marie Curie
I believe international work is a heavy task, but that it is nevertheless indispensable to go through an apprenticeship in it, at the cost of many efforts and also of a real spirit of sacrifice: however imperfect it may be, the work of Geneva has a grandeur that deserves our support.

Marie Curie
Humanity needs practical men, who get the most out of their work, and, without forgetting the general good, safeguard their own interests. But humanity also needs dreamers, for whom the disinterested development of an enterprise is so captivating that it becomes impossible for them to devote their care to their own material profit. Without doubt, these dreamers do not deserve wealth, because they do not desire it. Even so, a well-organized society should assure to such workers the efficient means of accomplishing their task, in a life freed from material care and freely consecrated to research.

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
I have the best husband one could dream of; I could never have imagined finding one like him. He is a true gift of heaven, and the more we live together the more we love each other.

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

Marie Curie
We believe the substance we have extracted from pitch-blende contains a metal not yet observed, related to bismuth by its analytical properties. If the existence of this new metal is confirmed we propose to call it polonium, from the name of the original country of one of us.

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