Free The Impossible Takes Longer by David Pratt

finding something to live for great enough to die for.
    Dag Hammarskjöld PEACE, 1961

Mind, Knowledge,
and Learning
     

    The work that leads to the Nobel Prize is conducted primarily in the minds of men and women, minds focused and disciplined, well trained and well educated. Analysis of mind, however, as opposed to its exercise, is the domain of philosophers, and there is no Nobel Prize for philosophy. Nonetheless, many laureates have made astute observations on the subjects of the human mind and human learning.
    Educational institutions play a major role in the lives of laureates. Among the universities, England's Cambridge University is the undisputed leader. It claims over sixty laureates, and if it were a country, it would stand sixth in the number of Nobel Prize winners it has produced. Harvard comes next with over forty laureates. City College of New York is singled out for praise on account of its free tuition, which enabled nine future laureates to attend. However, some universities also have Nobel skeletons in their closets. Cambridge University dismissed Bertrand Russell from his fellowship in 1918 for his pacifism, and in the same year, Emily Balch was fired by Wellesley College for the same reason. Brooklyn Polytechnic obliged Gertrude Elion to abandon her doctoral studies because she could not afford to give up her part-time
     
    job, and she became one of only a handful of science laureates never to earn a doctorate.
    Schools can be difficult places for precocious youngsters, and a number of Nobel laureates have been highly critical of educational practice. Others have taken steps to remedy the deficiencies of schools. Marie Curie, Bertrand Russell, and Rabindranath Tagore all founded schools. Several science laureates have been dedicated and popular university teachers. The physicist Carl Wieman and the chemist Harold Kroto committed their Nobel Prize money to projects to improve the teaching and understanding of science. Three weeks before his death, Richard Feynman, although seriously ill, accepted an invitation to participate in a panel on education at his local high school.
    THINKING AND THOUGHT
     
440. Never try to discourage thinking, for you are sure to succeed.
    Bertrand Russell LITERATURE, 1950
441. Never express yourself more clearly than you are able to think.
    Niels Bohr PHYSICS, 1922
442. No, no. You are not thinking, you are only being logical.
    Niels Bohr PHYSICS, 1922
443. I don't mind if you think slowly, doctor, but I do mind if you publish faster than you think.
    Wolfgang Pauli PHYSICS, 1945
444. One must think like a man of action, act like a man of thought.
    Henri Bergson LITERATURE, 1927
445. Many people would rather die than think. In fact they do.
    Bertrand Russell LITERATURE, 1950
446. If we fail to teach our children the skills they need to think clearly, they will march behind whatever guru wears the shiniest cloak.
    Paul Boyer CHEMISTRY, 1997
447. Some subjects are so serious that one can only joke about them.
    Niels Bohr PHYSICS, 1922
    INTELLECT AND REASON
     
448. Man is a rational animal—so at least I have been told. Throughout a long life, I have looked diligently for evidence in favor of this statement, but so far I have not had the good fortune to come across it.
    Bertrand Russell LITERATURE, 1950
449. I've seen more common sense expressed around the table in a farm house than I have around the table in the United Nations committee room.
    Lester Pearson PEACE, 1957
450. Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen.
    Albert Einstein PHYSICS, 1921
451. There's zero change in human intelligence in a million years and it won't change in the next million.
    Carleton Gajdusek MEDICINE, 1976
452. It is an exceptional, almost pathological constitution one has if one follows thoughts logically through, regardless of consequences. Such people make martyrs, apostles, or scientists, and mostly end up on the stake or in a chair, electric or academic.
    Albert