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Portrait of George Wald

George Wald

(1906–1997) Neuroscientist United States

72 quotes in 422 categories

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George Wald was a neuroscientist from the United States, best known for Twenty-six afternoons of biology.

Quick Facts About George Wald

Born: November 18, 1906
Died: April 12, 1997
Nationality: United States
Profession: Neuroscientist
Notable works: Twenty-six afternoons of biology

About George Wald

George Wald was an American scientist and activist who studied pigments in the retina. He won a share of the 1967 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Haldan Keffer Hartline and Ragnar Granit.

Awards & Honors

Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine Albert Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research Guggenheim Fellowship Frederic Ives Medal Rumford Prize honorary doctor of the University of Rennes

Quotes by George Wald · Page 2

I am growing old, and my future, so to speak, is already behind me.

Future

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To know reality is to accept it, and eventually to love it.

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Death seems to have been a rather late invention in evolution. One can go a long way in evolution before encountering an…

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As you lecture, you keep watching the faces, and information keeps coming back to you all the time.

Faces

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I tell my students to try early in life to find an unattainable objective.

Goals

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Civilization will end within 15 or 30 years unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind.

Action

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The thought that we're in competition with Russians or with Chinese is all a mistake, and trivial. We are one species, with…

Chinese

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In fact, death seems to have been a rather late invention in evolution. One can go a long way in evolution before…

Death

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The trouble with most of the things that people want is that they get them.

People

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A scientist lives with all reality. There is nothing better. To know reality is to accept it, and eventually to love it.

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Science goes from question to question; big questions, and little, tentative answers. The questions as they age grow ever broader, the answers…

Age

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We have fallen in love with the body. That's that thing that looks back at us from the mirror. That's the repository…

Body

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It's not good enough to give it tender, loving care, to supply it with breakfast foods, to buy it expensive educations. Those…

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There is nothing worth having that can be obtained by nuclear war - nothing material or ideological - no tradition that it…

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The Nobel Prize is an honor unique in the world in having found its way into the hearts and minds of simple…

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I can conceive of no nightmare so terrifying as establishing communication with a so-called superior (or, if you wish, advanced) technology in…

Advanced technology

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The Vietnamese have a secret weapon. It's their willingness to die beyond our willingness to kill. In effect, they've been saying, You…

Heaven

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One has only to contemplate the magnitude of this task to concede that the spontaneous generation of a living organism is impossible.…

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Our challenge is to give what account we can of what becomes of life in the solar system, this corner of the…

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Four elements, Hydrogen, carbon, oxygen and nitrogen, also provide an example of the astonishing togetherness of our universe. They make up the…

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I have often had cause to feel that my hands are cleverer than my head. That is a crude way of characterizing…

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“Life has a status in the physical universe. It is part of the order of nature. It has a high place in…

Life

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I tell my students, with a feeling of pride that I hope they will share, that the carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen that…

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The only use for an atomic bomb is to keep somebody else from using one. It can give us no protection-only the…

Atomic bomb

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About two million years ago, man appeared. He has become the dominant species on the earth. All other living things, animal and…

Animal

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We already know enough to begin to cope with all the major problems that are now threatening human life and much of…

Action

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A scientist is in a sense a learned small boy. There is something of the scientist in every small boy. Others must…

Science

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A scientist should be the happiest of men. Not that science isn't serious; but as everyone knows, being serious is one way…

Being gay

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I think if a physician wrote on a death certificate that old age was the cause of death, he'd be thrown out…

Age

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Most modern biologists, having reviewed with satisfaction the downfall of the spontaneous generation hypothesis, yet unwilling to accept the alternative belief in…

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I do not want to believe in God. Therefore I choose to believe in that which I know is scientifically impossible, spontaneous…

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“Mind, rather than emerging as a late outgrowth in the evolution of life, has existed always as the matrix, the source and…

Deism

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George Wald by topic

Life (24) Science (23)