Albert Szent-Györgyi quotes

Research is to see what everybody has seen and think what nobody has thought. (Albert Szent-Györgyi)

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.

Albert Szent-Györgyi

I am deeply moved if I see one man suffering and would risk my life for him. Then I talk impersonally about the possible pulverization of our big cities, with a hundred million dead. I am unable to multiply one man's suffering by a hundred million.

Albert Szent-Györgyi

I am not religious, but I am a pious man... A religious man has a definite religion. He says "God is there" or "God is there," "God is there." "Your god is not my god, and that's all." But the pious man, he just looks out with awe, and says, "where is God?" And "well, I don't understand it and I would like to know what this creation really means." That is a pious man, who is really touched by the greatness of nature and of the creation.

Albert Szent-Györgyi

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

Albert Szent-Györgyi

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

Albert Szent-Györgyi

If any student comes to me and says he wants to be useful to mankind and go into research to alleviate human suffering, I advise him to go into charity instead. Research wants real egotists who seek their own pleasure and satisfaction, but find it in solving the puzzles of nature.

Albert Szent-Györgyi

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

Albert Szent-Györgyi

Life is water, dancing to the tune of macro molecules.

Albert Szent-Györgyi

It is impossible to encircle the hips of a girl with my right arm and hold her smile in my left hand, then proceed to study the two items separately. Similarly, we can not separate life from living matter, in order to study only living matter and its reactions. Inevitably, studying living matter and its reactions, we study life itself.

Albert Szent-Györgyi

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. (Albert Szent-Györgyi)

[A vitamin is] a substance you get sick from if you don't eat it.

Albert Szent-Györgyi

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.

Albert Szent-Györgyi

[When I joined the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton] I did this in the hope that by rubbing elbows with those great atomic physicists and mathematicians I would learn something about living matters. But as soon as I revealed that in any living system there are more than two electrons, the physicists would not speak to me. With all their computers they could not say what the third electron might do. The remarkable thing is that it knows exactly what to do. So that little electron knows something that all the wise men of Princeton don't, and this can only he something very simple.

Albert Szent-Györgyi

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

Albert Szent-Györgyi

Whatever a man does he must do first in his mind.

Albert Szent-Györgyi

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

Albert Szent-Györgyi

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.

Albert Szent-Györgyi

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

Albert Szent-Györgyi

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

Albert Szent-Györgyi

Without energy life would be extinguished instantaneously, and the cellular fabric would collapse. (Albert Szent-Györgyi)

Senescent judges show how patriotic they are by passing out hard sentences for tearing up a draft card or following one's conscience according to the principles established by our country at the Nuremburg trials.

Albert Szent-Györgyi

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.

Albert Szent-Györgyi

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.

Albert Szent-Györgyi