Albert Szent-Gyorgyi Quotes (22 Quotes)


    Discovery consists in seeing what everyone else has seen and thinking what no one else has thought.

    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.

    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.


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


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

    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.

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

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

    Discovery consists of seeing what everybody has seen, and thinking what nobody has thought.

    Research is to see what everybody else has seen, and to think what nobody else has thought.

    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.


    Basic research may seem very expensive. I am a well-paid scientist. My hourly wage is equal to that of a plumber, but sometimes my research remains barren of results for weeks, months or years and my conscience begins to bother me for wasting the taxpayer's money. But in reviewing my life's work, I have to think that the expense was not wasted. Basic research, to which we owe everything, is relatively very cheap when compared with other outlays of modern society. The other day I made a rough calculation which led me to the conclusion that if one were to add up all the money ever spent by man on basic research, one would find it to be just about equal to the money spent by the Pentagon this past year.

    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.

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

    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.

    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.


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


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


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