George Wald
The only use for an atomic bomb is to keep somebody else from using one.
Nuclear weapons offer us nothing but a balance of terror, and a balance of terror is still terror.
A peacetime draft is the most un-American thing I know.
A physicist is an atom's way of knowing about atoms.
There's life all over this universe, but the only life in the solar system is on earth, and in the whole universe we are the only men.
You see, every creature alive on the earth today represents an unbroken line of life that stretches back to the first primitive organism to appear on this planet; and that is about three billion years.
Dropping those atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki was a war crime.
There is nothing worth having that can be obtained by nuclear war - nothing material or ideological - no tradition that it can defend. It is utterly self-defeating.
It would be a poor thing to be an atom in a universe without physicists, and physicists are made of atoms. A physicist is an atom's way of knowing about atoms.
We are the products of editing, rather than of authorship.
We've committed many war crimes in Vietnam - but I'll tell you something interesting about that. We were committing war crimes in World War II, before the Nuremberg trials were held and the principle of war crimes was stated.
We have to get rid of those nuclear weapons.
We have fallen in love with the body. That's that thing that looks back at us from the mirror. That's the repository of that lovely identity that you keep chasing all your life.
To know reality is to accept it, and eventually to love it.
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.
The trouble with most of the things that people want is that they get them.
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.
The only point of government is to safeguard and foster life.
The Nobel Prize is an honor unique in the world in having found its way into the hearts and minds of simple people everywhere. It casts a light of peace and reason upon us all; and for that I am especially grateful.
The concept of war crimes is an American invention.
Since we have had a history, men have pursued an ideal of immortality.
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.
Our business is with life, not death.
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.
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 think all of you know there is no adequate defense against massive nuclear attack.
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 my students to try early in life to find an unattainable objective.
I have lived much of my life among molecules. They are good company.
I am growing old, and my future, so to speak, is already behind me.
As you lecture, you keep watching the faces, and information keeps coming back to you all the time.
As far as I know, the most conservative estimates of the number of Americans who would be killed in a major nuclear attack, with everything working as well as can be hoped and all foreseeable precautions taken, run to about fifty million.
And, you see, we are living in a world in which all wars are wars of defense.
All War Departments are now Defense Departments. This is all part of the doubletalk of our time. The aggressor is always on the other side.
A scientist should be the happiest of men.
A scientist lives with all reality. There is nothing better.
A scientist is in a sense a learned small boy. There is something of the scientist in every small boy. Others must outgrow it. Scientists can stay that way all their lives.
A lecture is much more of a dialogue than many of you probably realize.
There are only two possible explanations as to how life arose: Spontaneous generation arising to evolution or a supernatural creative act of God.... There is no other possibility. Spontaneous generation was scientifically disproved 120 years ago by Louis Pasteur and others, but that just leaves us with only one other possibility... that life came as a supernatural act of creation by God, but I can't accept that philosophy because I do not want to believe in God. Therefore I choose to believe in that which I know is scientifically impossible, spontaneous generation leading to evolution.Collection: Philosophy
It would be a poor thing to be an atom in a universe without physicists, and physicists are made of atoms. A physicist is an atom's way of knowing about atoms.Collection: Science
Civilization will end within 15 or 30 years unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind.Collection: Taken
Most modern biologists, having reviewed with satisfaction the downfall of the spontaneous generation hypothesis, yet unwilling to accept the alternative belief in special creation, are left with nothing.Collection: Special
I do not want to believe in God. Therefore I choose to believe in that which I know is scientifically impossible, spontaneous generation leading to evolution.Collection: Believe
Every creature alive on the earth today represents an unbroken line of life that stretches back to the first primitive organism to appear on this planet; and that is about three billion years.Collection: Life
The great questions are those an intelligent child asks and, getting no answers, stops asking.Collection: Children
One has only to contemplate the magnitude of this task to concede that the spontaneous generation of a living organism is impossible. Yet here we are-as a result, I believe, of spontaneous generation.Collection: Believe
Four elements, Hydrogen, carbon, oxygen and nitrogen, also provide an example of the astonishing togetherness of our universe. They make up the "organic" molecules that constitute living organisms on a planet, and the nuclei of these same elements interact to generate the light of its star. Then the organisms on the planet come to depend wholly on that starlight, as they must if life is to persist. So it is that all life on the Earth runs on sunlight. [Referring to photosynthesis]Collection: Life
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.Collection: Science
We living things are a late outgrowth of the metabolism of our galaxy. The carbon that enters into our composition was cooked in a remote past in a dying star. The waters of ancient seas set the pattern of ions in our blood. The ancient atmospheres moulded our metabolism.Collection: Stars
When it comes to the origin of life there are only two possibilities: creation or spontaneous generation. There is no third way. Spontaneous generation was disproved one hundred years ago, but that leads us to only one other conclusion, that of supernatural creation. We cannot accept that on philosophical grounds; therefore, we choose to believe the impossible: that life arose spontaneously by chance!Collection: Believe