Marie Curie was a Polish and naturalized-French physicist and chemist who conducted pioneering research on radioactivity. She was the first woman to win a Nobel Prize, the first person and only woman to win twice, and the only person to win a Nobel Prize in two different sciences. She was part of the Curie family legacy of five Nobel Prizes. She was also the first woman to become a professor at the University of Paris, and in 1995 became the first woman to be entombed on her own merits in the Panthéon in Paris. Her achievements included the development of the theory of radioactivity (a term that she coined, techniques for isolating radioactive isotopes, and the discovery of two elements, polonium, and radium. Under her direction, the world’s first studies into the treatment of neoplasms were conducted using radioactive isotopes. She founded the Curie Institutes in Paris and in Warsaw, which remain major centers of medical research today. During World War I she developed mobile radiography units to provide X-ray services to field hospitals. May her quotes inspire you to take action so that you may live your dreams.
1. “Be less curious about people and more curious about ideas.” Marie Curie
2. “One never notices what has been done; one can only see what remains to be done.” Marie Curie
3. “Have no fear of perfection; you’ll never reach it.” Marie Curie
4. “I am one of those who think like Nobel, that humanity will draw more good than evil from new discoveries.” Marie Curie
5. “Life is not easy for any of us. But what of that?” Marie Curie
6. “I am among those who think that science has great beauty.” Marie Curie
7. “Knowledge leaves no regrets. Except for radiation. I wish I’d never messed with that.” Marie Curie
8. “I believe international work is a heavy task, but that it is nevertheless indispensable to go through an apprenticeship in it, at the cost of many efforts and also of a real spirit of sacrifice: however imperfect it may be, the work of Geneva has a grandeur that deserves our support.” Marie Curie
9. “I was taught that the way of progress was neither swift nor easy.” Marie Curie
10. “You cannot hope to build a better world without improving the individuals.” Marie Curie
11. “Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood. Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less.” Marie Curie
12. “In science, we must be interested in thingsm not in persons.” Marie Curie
13. “We must not forget that when radium was discovered no one knew that it would prove useful in hospitals. The work was one of pure science. And this is a proof that scientific work must not be considered from the point of view of the direct usefulness of it. It must be done for itself, for the beauty of science, and then there is always the chance that a scientific discovery may become like the radium a benefit for mankind.” Marie Curie
14. “All my life through, the new sights of nature made me rejoice like a child.” Marie Curie
15. “We must have perseverance and above all confidence in ourselves.” Marie Curie
16. “I have frequently been questioned, especially by women, of how I could reconcile family life with a scientific career. Well, it has not been easy.” Marie Curie
17. “A scientist in his laboratory is not a mere technician: he is also a child confronting natural phenomena that impress him as though they were fairy tales.” Marie Curie
18. “There are sadistic scientists who hurry to hunt down errors instead of establishing the truth.” Marie Curie
19. “Humanity needs practical men, who get the most out of their work, and, without forgetting the general good, safeguard their own interests. But humanity also needs dreamers, for whom the disinterested development of an enterprise is so captivating that it becomes impossible for them to devote their care to their own material profit.” Marie Curie
20. “You must never be fearful of what you are doing when it is right.” Marie Curie
21. “I have no dress except the one I wear every day. If you are going to be kind enough to give me one, please let it be practical and dark so that I can put it on afterwards to go to the laboratory.” Marie Curie
22. “After all, science is essentially international, and it is only through lack of the historical sense that national qualities have been attributed to it.” Marie Curie
23. “Without doubt, these dreamers do not deserve wealth, because they do not desire it. Even so, a well-organized society should assure to such workers the efficient means of accomplishing their task, in a life freed from material care and freely consecrate.” Marie Curie
24. “It can be easily understood that there was no place in our life for worldly relations.” Marie Curie
25. “It is important to make a dream of life and of a dream reality.” Marie Curie
26. “Sometimes my courage fails me and I think I ought to stop working, live in the country and devote myself to gardening. But I am held by a thousand bonds, and I don’t know when I shall be able to arrange things otherwise. Nor do I know whether, even by writing scientific books, I could live without the laboratory.” Marie Curie
27. “First principle: never to let one’s self be beaten down by persons or events.” Marie Curie
28. “There is nothing more wonderful than being a scientist, nowhere I would rather be than in my lab, staining up my clothes and getting paid to play.” Marie Curie
29. “It is my earnest desire that some of you should carry on this scientific work and keep for your ambition the determination to make a permanent contribution to science.” Marie Curie
30. “Certain bodies become luminous when heated. Their luminosity disappears after some time, but the capacity of becoming luminous afresh through heat is restored to them by the action of a spark, and also by the action of radium.” Marie Curie
31. “A great discovery does not issue from a scientists brain ready-made, like Minerva springing fully armed from Jupiter’s head; it is the fruit of an accumulation of preliminary work.” Marie Curie
32. “We must believe that we are gifted for something, and that this thing, at whatever cost, must be attained.” Marie Curie
33. “You’ll never make me believe women were made to walk on stilts.” Marie Curie
34. “There is no connection between my scientific work and the facts of private life.” Marie Curie
35. “Each of us must work for his own improvement, and at the same time share a general responsibility for all humanity, our particular duty being to aid those to whom we think we can be most useful.” Marie Curie
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