Simon Cowell Quotes

I spent eighteen months as a graduate student in physics at Columbia University, waiting unhappily for an opportunity to work in a laboratory and wondering if I should continue in physics.

I began the study of medicine, impelled by a desire for knowledge of facts and of man. The resolution to do disciplined work tied me to both laboratory and clinic for a long time to come.

I went to engineering school, which I thought was what I wanted to do, for about two weeks. We had an orientation class and we met this guy where he worked and stuff and it was cool, but I was like, 'There is no way this is going to be my life.'

Doors open to you every time you get a different role. So, yeah, the research is my passion; that's why I keep doing it.

I wanted to be a scientist. But I had no math skills.

I knew I wasn't going to be a scientist; I knew that early. When they started talking about dissecting frogs, I knew I wasn't going to be a scientist.

I don't love being an actor, but I'm not qualified to be anything else. I was an auto mechanic and drove a tow truck and tried to go to school to be a paramedic.

I went to law school. I found it interesting for the first three weeks. By the fourth week, I found it tedious. I got bored and grew restless. I had no other plan for a job, because from seventh grade on, I had planned on law. So I shifted my focus from classes to extracurricular activities.

Science is an investigation," Coach said, sanding his hands together. "Science requires us to transform into spies." Put that way, science almost sounded fun. But I'd been in Coach's class long enough not to get my hopes up.

At school, I was fanatical about being a scientist.

I didn't even realize that I was interested in film until I was in college, and since then, I've had a very uncertain and sort of lost decade.

The history is important because science is a discipline deeply immersed in history. In other words, every time you perform an experiment in science or in medicine, what you're actually doing is you're answering someone, answering a question raised by someone in the past.

Yes, from the time I was in junior high school I decided I wanted to be a chemist. I didn't quite know what a chemist was, but I kept it up and got my Ph.D. in physical chemistry.

Kids come out of the chute liking science. They ask, 'How come? Why? What's this?' They pick up stuff to examine it. We might not call that science, but it's discovering the world around us.

I wouldn't want to make the same film every time. I get easily bored.

I realised I had spent the majority of my adult life doing two characters - Maude from 1972-'79 and Dorothy from 1985-'92 - and I really didn't know what I wanted to do after 'Golden Girls.' I knew what I didn't want to do - any more sitcoms, or wait for the next great role that might never come.

Science, as opposed to technology, does violence to common sense.

A big part of engaging kids in science is not getting the single, correct answer; it's being willing to work with students to discover the correct answer.

I am completely obsessed with numbers and data. I have become a scientist in later life.

I want to try as many different roles as I can. I want to do everything.

I would have been happy teaching music in schools - I still would be, and I still might be, although I don't know if I'm clever enough.

From a young age I had a real sense of the world of work. This is what vocational education gives you.

Every time I hear a revenge story, I run the opposite direction. I just don't think such stories have any novelty value.

The weird thing about drama school is that you train for three years for one thing, and then, more often than not, it's something that you haven't trained for that you end up doing.

As a child, I envisioned a career in the hard sciences. In sixth grade, I was buying college chemistry textbooks.