Lise Meitner

I am myself a little doubtful about the 'uranium project'. I hope that it will not be successful this time.

The sudden discovery that uranium could undergo fission was a result of a series of investigations which were undertaken with the sole aim of exploring the properties of the atomic nucleus.

The life of a scientist is a continual struggle against the accepted ideas of the time.

I love physics with all my heart... It is a kind of personal love, as one has for a person to whom one is grateful for many things.

Women have a great responsibility, and they are obliged to try, so far as they can, to prevent another war.

It was not only scientifically wrong, but also politically dangerous, to try to base the value of human beings on 'racial' differences.

I felt it was a great injustice that I was not allowed to enter the main laboratories or the lecture halls.

The splitting of the uranium nucleus into two parts, each of them a nucleus of a medium-weight element, was a process so different from all previously known nuclear reactions that it required a very careful examination.

Perhaps it is a good thing that we cannot foresee the future in detail.

The joy of seeing and understanding is the most perfect gift of nature.

I am now regarded as a Swedish physicist, and I am treated with more respect than I ever was in Germany.

The discrepancy between the very large energy release and the absence of any comparable energy in the form of radiation was very striking.

We were walking up and down in the snow, I on skis and Frisch on foot... and then we both sat down on a tree trunk and started to calculate on little pieces of paper.

It is impossible to separate the recent developments of atomic physics from their political implications.

I have no special talents. I am only passionately curious.

The discovery of nuclear fission was a case of preparedness meeting opportunity.

My personal tragedy was not that I was forced to leave Germany, but that I had to leave a country which had been my home for so long, and which I loved.

The physicist must be able to see the wood for the trees.

It is not the possession of truth, but the success which attends the seeking after it, that enriches the seeker and brings happiness to him.

I believe all young people think about how they would like their lives to be; I did, passionately. I wanted a life filled with intellectual pursuits.