The only point of government is to safeguard and foster life.
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.
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 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.
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 peacetime draft is the most un-American thing I know.
We are the products of editing, rather than of authorship.
