ALBERT SZENT-GYORGYI

Discovery is seeing what everybody else has seen, and thinking what nobody else has thought.

A discovery is said to be an accident meeting a prepared mind.

Research is four things: brains with which to think, eyes with which to see, machines with which to measure and, fourth, money.

Without energy life would be extinguished instantaneously, and the cellular fabric would collapse.

Water is life's matter and matrix, mother and medium. There is no life without water.

I am the son of a small and far-away nation and the other laureates have all come from different countries from all over the world and we all were equally received here with signs of sympathy.

A vitamin is a substance that makes you ill if you don't eat it.

A living cell requires energy not only for all its functions, but also for the maintenance of its structure.

This oxidation of hydrogen in stages seems to be one of the basic principles of biological oxidation.

This celebration here tells me that this work is not hopeless. I thank you for this teaching with all my heart and lift my glass to human solidarity, to the ultimate victory of knowledge, peace, good-will and understanding.

So I set out to study the oxidation system in the potato, which, if damaged, causes the plant to turn brown. I did this in the hope of discovering, through these studies, the key to the understanding of adrenal function.

The foodstuff, carbohydrate, is essentially a packet of hydrogen, a hydrogen supplier, a hydrogen donor, and the main event during its combustion is the splitting off of hydrogen.

The source of this energy is the sun's radiation.

Whatever man does he must do first in his mind.

Here we stand in the middle of this new world with our primitive brain, attuned to the simple cave life, with terrific forces at our disposal, which we are clever enough to release, but whose consequences we cannot comprehend.

Investigations during the last few decades have brought hydrogen instead of carbon, and instead of CO2 water, the mother of all life, into the foreground.

The real scientist is ready to bear privation and, if need be, starvation rather than let anyone dictate to him which direction his work must take.

Science has helped us to understand and master ourselves, creating an elevated new form of human life, the wealth and beauty of which cannot be pictured today by the keenest imagination.

When I received the Nobel Prize, the only big lump sum of money I have ever seen, I had to do something with it. The easiest way to drop this hot potato was to invest it, to buy shares. I knew that World War II was coming and I was afraid that if I had shares which rise in case of war, I would wish for war. So I asked my agent to buy shares which go down in the event of war. This he did. I lost my money and saved my soul.

Discovery consists of looking at the same thing as everyone else and thinking something different.

A discovery must be, by definition, at variance with existing knowledge. During my lifetime, I made two. Both were rejected offhand by the popes of the field. Had I predicted these discoveries in my applications, and had those authorities been my judges, it is evident what their decisions would have been.

All living organisms are but leaves on the same tree of life. The various functions of plants and animals and their specialized organs are manifestations of the same living matter. This adapts itself to different jobs and circumstances, but operates on the same basic principles. Muscle contraction is only one of these adaptations. In principle it would not matter whether we studied nerve, kidney or muscle to understand the basic principles of life. In practice, however, it matters a great deal.

Life is water, dancing to the tune of solids.

Through the ages, man's main concern was life after death. Today, for the first time, we find we must ask questions about whether there will be life before death.

This paper of yours is so lightly written that you must have sweated terribly.