Hope Jahren Quotes

I'm convinced part of the reason I got signed is because of who I am, and it makes me sad.

The scientist-community guy may get a $500,000 grant, and if his equipment works or doesn't work, he still gets a gold star for doing the science experiment. For me, there is no merit in anything for doing an experiment; I have to go home with pictures.

Unsuccessful people are the ones who are impressed by celebrity, by people's names and titles.

Scientists are being portrayed by much of the power structure in politics and business as having a vested interest - that they're just out to get more grant money by exaggerating the threats.

I don't think about awards when I set out to do something. If that happens, it's great.

I like to be good. I like being good at things. I wish that was valued instead of me being 'better' than another woman who also writes things and makes movies.

One of our main objectives is to restore meritocracy within research and academia, where cronyism is also widespread. We also want to give money back to public research that is dying.

But I have to say, in my 12 years as the dean of admissions at Yale Law School, there was a lot of legal behaviour that I saw that worried me and that clearly was allowing wealthier and privileged students to tilt the balance in their favour.

I am not the type who'd enter the best schools just to prove myself.

I'm not a huge award type person, that's not really what lights my fire.

I don't work for awards; they're just an icing on the cake.

What props up biological research, at least in the vaunted U.S. of A., involves a situation so deeply imbued with entitlement mentality that it has sunk into institutional corruption.

As long as my work continues to speak for itself outside of what I look like, I'm okay.

I wasn’t gifted. Mom was wrong. I was just smart and I worked hard. I had fooled myself into thinking that was something important to the rest of the world. Other people were complicit in this ruse. Nobody had told me I was common.

The school system is constructed to praise you if you get high grades. And if you get straight A's, you're the one that everyone puts forward, and they prognosticate that the straight-A person is the one most likely to succeed, because that's the way the school system is constructed and conceived.

You can take away the money and the fame. I don't look at myself as any of those things.

The people that really pass judgment on you really have nothing to do with what you do, usually.

The word genius was whispered into my ear, the first thing I ever heard, while I was still mewling in my crib. So it never occurred to me that I wasn't until middle age.

Your value is in yourself; the other stuff will come and go.

If the only vision we have of ourselves comes from the social mirror - from the current social paradigm and from the opinions, perceptions, and paradigms of the people around us - our view of ourselves is like the reflection in a crazy mirror room at the carnival.

I don't like honors. I'm appreciated for the work that I did, and for people who appreciate it, and I notice that other physicists use my work. I don't need anything else. I don't think there's any sense to anything else.... I've already got the prize. The prize is the pleasure of finding the thing out, the kick in the discovery, the observation that other people use it. Those are the real things. The honors are unreal to me. I don't believe in honors... I can't stand it, it hurts me.

If we keep our little flame alive, our first feeling of enthusiasm of who we are, without the influence or intervention of others, we will prevail.

I think some people who go into public life, if they go in needing the applause of thousands, they're never going to work out successfully in the end, because they don't know who they are apart from the crowds.

Hollywood is like high school, there are always going to be people who hate you and people who like you. When you're a teen, [that's tough] because you're hyper-aware of what other people are gonna say and think. But neither defines who you are as a person or how successful you are unless you let them.

I wouldn't say there was a moment of realization when I wanted to be a runner; it was always just something I was.