Humorous Sayings

I owe my success to the fact that I never had a clock in my workroom. Seventy-five of us worked twenty hours every day and slept only four hours — and thrived on it.

I told [John Kruesi] I was going to record talking, and then have the machine talk back. He thought it absurd. However, it was finished, the foil was put on; I then shouted 'Mary had a little lamb', etc.

Just because something doesn't do what you planned it to do doesn't mean it's useless.

Until man duplicates a blade of grass, nature can laugh at his so-called scientific knowledge.

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.

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

First principle: never to let one's self be beaten down by persons or by events.

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

Posterity will one day laugh at the sublime foolishness of the modern materialistic philosophy.

Messieurs, c'est les microbes qui auront le dernier mot. (Gentlemen, it is the microbes who will have the last word.)

Little science takes you away from God but more of it takes you to Him.

I am on the edge of mysteries and the veil is getting thinner and thinner.

I am often scolded by Madame Pasteur, but I tell her I shall lead her to fame.

You have not succeeded in your experiments, that is all there is to it.

There's nothing quite as frightening as someone who knows they are right.

A man who is certain he is right is almost sure to be wrong.

Lectures which really teach will never be popular; lectures which are popular will never really teach.

I can at any moment convert my time into money, but I do not require more of the latter than is sufficient for necessary purposes.

I am no poet, but if you think for yourselves, as I proceed, the facts will form a poem in your minds.

It may be a weed instead of a fish that, after all my labour, I at last pull up.