Be less curious about people and more curious about ideas.
Marie CurieRead
I am among those who think that science has great beauty. A scientist in his laboratory is not only a technician: he is also a child placed before natural phenomena which impress him like a fairy tale. We should not allow it to be believed that all scientific progress can be reduced to mechanisms, machines, gearings, even though such machinery has its own beauty.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Marie Curie emphasizes the intrinsic beauty of science, highlighting the wonder and imagination involved in scientific discovery.
In this quote, Marie Curie reflects on the profound beauty that exists in the realm of science, suggesting that a scientist's work goes beyond mere technical prowess. She likens the scientist's experience in the laboratory to that of a child experiencing a fairy tale, where the natural world presents itself as a source of wonder. Curie warns against reducing scientific progress solely to mechanical processes, suggesting that while mechanisms and machines have their own appeal, it is important to recognize the beauty found in the exploration and understanding of natural phenomena.
Themes
ScienceBeautyWonderDiscoveryNatural Phenomena
In practice
Example use cases
In a speech at a science conference.
More from Marie Curie
All quotes →I tried out various experiments described in treatises on physics and chemistry, and the results were sometimes unexpected. At times, I would be encouraged by a little unhoped-for success; at others, I would be in the deepest despair because of accidents and failures resulting from my inexperience.
Marie CurieRead
The sensitive plate, the gas which is ionised, the fluorescent screen, are in reality receivers, into another kind of energy, chemical energy, ionic energy... luminous energy.
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During the year 1894, Pierre Curie wrote me letters that seem to me admirable in their form. No one of them was very long, for he had the habit of concise expression, but all were written in a spirit of sincerity and with an evident anxiety to make the one he desired as a companion know him as he was.
Marie CurieRead
Certein 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 CurieRead
In 1903, I finished my doctor's thesis and obtained the degree. At the end of the same year, the Nobel prize was awarded jointly to Becquerel, my husband and me for the discovery of radioactivity and new radioactive elements.
Marie CurieRead
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