Top 100 Laureate Quotes
#1. I was appointed Poet Laureate. It came totally out of the blue because most Poet Laureates had been considerably older than I. It was not something that I even had begun to dream about!
Rita Dove
#3. We have a disturbing cultural appetite for novelty, and it seems to me wrong each new laureate should dislodge the ideas of his or her predecessor, especially when they're still unfolding.
Louise Gluck
#4. I served the famous professors and scholars, and eventually they learned that the Reverend Moon is superior to them. Even Nobel laureate academics who thought they were at the center of knowledge are as nothing in front of me.
Sun Myung Moon
#5. I knew if I lived long enough I would be poet laureate of something.
Patti Smith
#6. 'Birdman' is basically 'All About Eve' - the 1950 comedy about rehearsal rivalries in a Broadway show, and another Best Picture laureate - reimagined as a Batman suicide mission. The movie couldn't be actor-ier.
Richard Corliss
#7. Too many American authors have a servile streak where their backbone should be. Where's our latest Nobel laureate? More than likely you'll find him in the Rose Garden kissing the First Lady's foot.
Edward Abbey
#8. Amanuensis. That was the word she chose, and since it was straight out of the nineteenth century, her mother approved, relishing the blank stares she received when she told her lady guests what position her daughter had acquired with the State Poet Laureate.
Toni Morrison
#9. George Stigler Nobel laureate and a leader of Chicago School was asked why there were no Nobel Prizes awarded in the other social sciences, sociology, psychology, history, etc. "Don't worry", Stigler said, "they have already have a Nobel Prize in ... Literature"
Robert Kuttner
#10. As poet laureate, I was asked to be a spokesman for literature.
Robert Hass
#11. Powerful government tends to draw into it people with bloated egos, people who think they know more than everyone else and have little hesitance in coercing their fellow man. Or as Nobel Laureate Friedrich Hayek said, "in government, the scum rises to the top".
Walter E. Williams
#12. People write me from all over the country, asking me, and sometimes even telling me, what they think a poet laureate should do. I found that immensely valuable.
Rita Dove
#13. I am honoured to join education innovators like Ms. Vicky Colbert, Dr. Madhav Chavan, and Sir Fazle Hasan Abed as the fourth WISE Prize for Education Laureate. I accept this prize on behalf of the million girls Camfed is committed to supporting through secondary education.
Ann Cotton
#14. My highest aspiration in life is to serve as the Limerick Laureate of Nantucket.
Alan C. Baird
#15. For me to sit down here, even as a Nobel Laureate and make a prediction about which science I think that will be a mistake.
Ahmed H. Zewail
#16. The literature [Nobel] laureate of this year has said that an author can do anything as long as his readers believe him.
A scientist cannot do anything that is not checked and rechecked by scientists of this network before it is accepted.
Sune Bergstrom
#17. I am honoured to have the opportunity to follow in the footsteps of my esteemed colleague and fellow poet Mr. Dennis Lee, it will be with pride and passion that I carry forward the mandate of the Poet Laureate position for the City of Toronto and its residents.
Pier Giorgio Di Cicco
#18. Crowned with leaves of the laurel. In England the Poet Laureate is an officer of the sovereign's court, acting as dancing skeleton at every royal feast and singing-mute at every royal funeral.
Ambrose Bierce
#19. I believe that every Nobel Laureate has the feeling that this prize is really a gift - because nobody can or should work just for this prize.
Klaus Von Klitzing
#20. I cannot think of a greater symbol of human resistance and courage than our Nobel laureate colleague Andrei Sakharov.
Torsten Wiesel
#21. Would I be commenting on Amy Fisher?
Was that the sort of subject that someone who hoped to become poet laureate should discuss? Would those British laureates who had traditionally written about royal birthdays and royal jubilees have dealt with such goings on?
Calvin Trillin
#22. Children will come out and listen to a writer whose books they like. They don't need a government agency or a medal that says 'laureate' to continue that.
Anthony Browne
#23. There are distinct duties of a poet laureate. I plan a reading series at the Library of Congress and advise the librarian. The rest is how I want to promote poetry.
Rita Dove
#24. It's the combination of the intimate and the public that I find so exciting about being poet laureate.
Rita Dove
#25. I am a Nobel Peace laureate and my business should be to try to bring stability, not to be a red rag to bulls.
Desmond Tutu
#26. Being Poet Laureate made me realize I was capable of a larger voice. There is a more public utterance I can make as a poet.
Rita Dove
#27. Yes, I am the first Latino poet laureate in the United States. But I'm also here for everyone and from everyone. My voice is made by everyone's voices.
Juan Felipe Herrera
#28. One of my main decisions when accepting the job of Children's Laureate was that I must continue working on picture books. If I don't write and illustrate for some time, then I begin to question who I am.
Anthony Browne
#29. The late Kenyan Nobel peace laureate Wangari Maathai put it simply and well when she said, the higher you go, the fewer women there are.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
#30. In many ways, when you're a Nobel peace laureate, you have an obligation to humankind, to society.
Desmond Tutu
#31. I was a subject of ridicule and lectures about the basics of crystallography. The leader of the opposition to my findings was the two-time Nobel Laureate Linus Pauling, the idol of the American Chemical Society and one of the most famous scientists in the world.
Dan Shechtman
#32. They wrote to me and said something about it, and I said that if it doesn't involve any work, I'll do it.
(On being named Minnesota's first Poet Laureate)
Robert Bly
#33. The woman who engaged him had no idea that her gardener was one of the most distinguished scientists in Britain until a friend came for tea one day and, looking out the window, casually asked: "My dear, why is the Nobel laureate Sir Lawrence Bragg pruning your hedges?" Late
Bill Bryson
#34. Part of my job as Children's Laureate is to visit schools and talk about my love of books and stories and encourage them all to do it as well - to read, to write, to never be afraid of their own voice. Because we all have something to say.
Malorie Blackman
#35. With this blistering salvo of poetic gutshots Lawson has proven himself Bizarro's true bard, its mad laureate. Switching from dark whimsy to retina-blast shock to political outrage without missing a beat, The Troublesome Amputee is a powerful collection of pitch-black verse.
Jeremy Robert Johnson
#36. My name was originally John Collins, but I just didn't think it had the flair I needed. I found out the poet laureate of Poland was named Krasinski and so it seemed like a shoe-in for show business.
John Krasinski
#37. Ted Hughes has been appointed poet laureate to succeed Sir John Betjeman, which is a bit like appointing a grim young crow to replace a cuddly old teddy bear.
Philip Howard, 20th Earl Of Arundel
#38. The important thing is to do what you most love in the best way. If you love literature, you could be a great writer and perhaps one day become a Nobel Prize Laureate for Literature.
Aaron Ciechanover
#39. As the Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel warned years ago, to forget a holocaust is to kill twice.
Iris Chang
#40. Inspiring passion in children for books, and the world of imagination and creativity fuelled by them, is a fundamental reason for why the Children's Laureate post exists.
Anthony Browne
#41. I know some people might think it odd - unworthy even - for me to have written a cookbook, but I make no apologies. The U.S. poet laureate Billy Collins thought I had demeaned myself by writing poetry for Hallmark Cards, but I am the people's poet so I write for the people.
Maya Angelou
#42. Pretty much the day I stopped being laureate, the poems that had been few and far between came back to me, like birds in the evening nesting in a tree.
Andrew Motion
#43. How can we speak of right and justice if we take an innocent creature and shed its blood? How can we pray to God for mercy if we ourselves have no mercy? Nobel laureate in literature.
Isaac Bashevis Singer
#44. Once in a while, I have to pinch myself to remind myself I am Nobel laureate, but that is not part of my work plan every day.
Mohamed ElBaradei
#45. The worst thing about being the laureate has been the attitude of a tiny minority of adults who haven't liked some of the things I'm supposed to have said and who have used it as an opportunity to be verbally abusive and nasty, but I haven't let it rule my world!
Malorie Blackman
#46. Why demons, when man himself is a demon?' the Nobel Laureate Singer's 'last demon' asked from his attic in Tishevitz. To which Chamcha's sense of balance, his much-to-be-said-for-and-against reflex, wished to add: 'And why angels, when man is angelic too?
Salman Rushdie
#47. Being the Children's Laureate has been educational, sometimes hectic, but most of all, great fun.
Malorie Blackman
#48. Legendary rock musician. Poet laureate of the working class. Voice of America's conscience.
Harrison Howe
#49. When I became poet laureate, I was in a slightly uncomfortable position because I think a lot of poetry isn't worth reading.
Billy Collins
#50. Craig Johnson is not what you might expect . . . and yet he is everything you might expect. He is a man of letters and a man of his word. A laureate with a lariat, if you will. In short, Craig is the spring that feeds the very deep well that is Walt Longmire.
Craig Johnson
#51. The poet laureate of England talked about murdering Jews on the West Bank.
Steven T. Katz
#52. What does "poet laureate" mean? Nothing. It means a person with laurel branches twined around his head. Which is not something people do much now.
Nicholson Baker
#53. Being the first black Nobel laureate, and the first African, the African world considered me personal property. I lost the remaining shreds of my anonymity, even to walk a few yards in London, Paris or Frankfurt without being stopped.
Wole Soyinka
#54. A drop in younger children visiting libraries is of great concern. As children's laureate, I am passionate about the role of libraries, both in schools and in the wider community. They are unique places where children can begin their journey as readers, as well as being creative hubs.
Chris Riddell
#56. The best thing about being Children's Laureate has definitely been all the children and teens I've met.
Malorie Blackman
#57. Bid amaranthus all his beauty shed,
And daffodillies fill their cups with tears,
To strew the laureate to hearse when Lycid lies.
John Milton
#58. So I don't think I'll make Poet Laureate,
but I swear I'm not twisted and bitter,
If finely-wrought talents
don't weigh in the balance,
I can always write haiku on Twitter.
Rosy Cole
#59. Before modern feminism, stories of female ambition were silenced or erased; even now, they are told with apology ("Yes, it's a great honor to be a Nobel Prize laureate, but really, what I love best is staying home and being a mother to Kevin and Annie").
Harriet Lerner
#60. I want to put the joy of creativity, of drawing every day, of having a go and being surprised at what one can achieve with just a pencil and an idea at the heart of my term as laureate. I want to make sure people have fun whilst addressing fundamental issues I care about passionately.
Chris Riddell
#61. I had fallen in love with a young man ... , and we were planning to get married. And then he died of subacute bacterial endocarditis ... Two years later with the advent of penicillin, he would have been saved. It reinforced in my mind the importance of scientific discovery ...
Gertrude B. Elion
#62. Reality is complicated. There is no justification for all of the hasty conclusions.
Hideki Yukawa
#63. Mathematics began to seem too much like puzzle solving. Physics is puzzle solving, too, but of puzzles created by nature, not by the mind of man.
Maria Goeppert-Mayer
#64. A famous name has this peculiarity that it becomes gradually smaller especially in natural sciences where each succeeding discovery invariably overshadows what precedes.
Jacobus Henricus Van 't Hoff
#65. If a problem is clearly stated, it has no further interest to the physicist.
Peter Debye
#66. Those who think 'Science is Measurement' should search Darwin's works for numbers and equations.
David H. Hubel
#67. Since the beginning of physics, symmetry considerations have provided us with an extremely powerful and useful tool in our effort to understand nature. Gradually they have become the backbone of our theoretical formulation of physical laws.
Tsung-Dao Lee
#68. Scientific truth is universal, because it is only discovered by the human brain and not made by it, as art is.
Konrad Lorenz
#69. Unless social sciences can be as creative as natural science, our new tools are not likely to be of much use to us.
Edgar Douglas Adrian
#70. I told my three sons stories about germs more than fifty years ago as fanciful bedtime tales.
Arthur Kornberg
#71. One's instinct is at first to try and get rid of a discrepancy, but I believe that experience shows such an endeavour to be a mistake. What one ought to do is to magnify a small discrepancy with a view to finding out the explanation.
John William Strutt
#72. If the hand be held between the discharge-tube and the screen, the darker shadow of the bones is seen within the slightly dark shadow-image of the hand itself ... For brevity's sake I shall use the expression 'rays'; and to distinguish them from others of this name I shall call them 'X-rays'.
Wilhelm Conrad Rontgen
#73. That one must do some work seriously and must be independent and not merely amuse oneself in life - this our mother has told us always, but never that science was the only career worth following.
Irene Joliot-Curie
#74. Science, as long as it limits itself to the descriptive study of the laws of nature, has no moral or ethical quality and this applies to the physical as well as the biological sciences.
Ernst Boris Chain
#75. More than any other product of human scientific culture scientific knowledge is the collective property of all mankind.
Konrad Lorenz
#76. Pierre Curie, a brilliant scientist, happened to marry a still more brilliant one - Marie, the famous Madame Curie - and is the only great scientist in history who is consistently identified as the husband of someone else.
Isaac Asimov
#77. Science, like nothing else among the institutions of mankind, grows like a weed every year. Art is subject to arbitrary fashion, religion is inwardly focused and driven only to sustain itself, law shuttles between freeing us and enslaving us.
Kary Mullis
#79. True, the initial ideas are in general those of an individual, but the establishment of the reality and truth is in general the work of more than one person.
Willard F. Libby
#80. Physics is becoming so unbelievably complex that it is taking longer and longer to train a physicist. It is taking so long, in fact, to train a physicist to the place where he understands the nature of physical problems that he is already too old to solve them.
Eugene Paul Wigner
#81. I should like to preface my remarks with a personal statement in order that my later remarks will not be misunderstood. I consider myself an atheist.
Subrahmanijan Chandrasekhar
#82. The future of mankind is going to be decided within the next two generations, and there are two absolute requisites: We must aim at a stable-state society [with limited population growth] and the destruction of nuclear stockpiles. ... Otherwise I don't see how we can survive much later than 2050.
Jacques Monod
#83. At lunch Francis winged into the Eagle to tell everyone within hearing distance that we had found the secret of life.
James D. Watson
#84. Once a molecule is asymmetric, its extension proceeds also in an asymmetrical sense. This concept completely eliminates the difference between natural and artificial synthesis. The advance of science has removed the last chemical hiding place for the once so highly esteemed vis vitalis.
Hermann Emil Fischer
#85. Tapestries are made by many artisans working together. The contributions of separate workers cannot be discerned in the completed work, and the loose and false threads have been covered over. So it is in our picture of particle physics.
Sheldon L. Glashow
#86. Littlewood, on Hardy's own estimate, is the finest mathematician he has ever known. He was the man most likely to storm and smash a really deep and formidable problem; there was no one else who could command such a combination of insight, technique and power.
Henry Hallett Dale
#87. If the militarily most powerful and least threatened states need nuclear weapons for their security, how can one deny such security to countries that are truly insecure? The present nuclear policy is a recipe for proliferation. It is a policy for disaster.
Joseph Rotblat
#88. It is essential for genetic material to be able to make exact copies of itself; otherwise growth would produce disorder, life could not originate, and favourable forms would not be perpetuated by natural selection.
Maurice Wilkins
#89. I might paraphrase Churchill and say: never have I received so much for so little.
[Exemplifying humility, upon accepting the Nobel Prize in Chemistry.]
Luis Federico Leloir
#90. As is known worldwide, Japan has tried to catch up with the western countries since the beginning of this century by importing science from them.
Kenichi Fukui
#91. Authority in science exists to be questioned, since heresy is the spring from which new ideas flow.
John C. Polanyi
#92. It is because I know all that science can bring to the world that I shall continue my efforts to ensure that it contributes to the happiness of all men, whether they be white, black, or yellow, and not to their annihilation in the name of some divine mission or other.
Frederic Joliot-Curie
#93. Raised in a completely nonreligious family, Joliot never attended any church and was a thoroughgoing atheist all his life.
Francis Perrin
#95. [Pure research] is worth every penny it costs.
Harold Urey
#96. Except for the rare cases of plastid inheritance, the inheritance of all known cofactors can be sufficiently accounted for by the presence of genes in the chromosomes. In a word the cytoplasm may be ignored genetically.
Thomas Hunt Morgan
#97. [My study of the universe] leaves little doubt that life has occurred on other planets. I doubt if the human race is the most intelligent form of life.
Harold Urey
#98. I learned what research was all about as a research student [with] Stoppani ... Max Perutz, and ... Fred Sanger ... From them, I always received an unspoken message which in my imagination I translated as 'Do good experiments, and don't worry about the rest.
Cesar Milstein
#99. We may fondly imagine that we are impartial seekers after truth, but with a few exceptions, to which I know that I do not belong, we are influenced - and sometimes strongly - by our personal bias; and we give our best thoughts to those ideas which we have to defend.
August Krogh
#100. If my efforts have led to greater success than usual, this is due, I believe, to the fact that during my wanderings in the field of medicine, I have strayed onto paths where the gold was still lying by the wayside. It takes a little luck to be able to distinguish gold from dross, but that is all.
Robert Koch
