“It is very difficult to find appropriate words to say ‘thank you’ for an honour like the Nobel Prize.”

Many science people feel groups like WHO are there to do a job and not to be dealt with in a political way.

If you start from nothing, it is very difficult to get anywhere.

I was brought up as a physicist.

For polyatomic free radicals and ions, one is dependent both for the ground states and the excited states on the study of electronic spectra to obtain the shapes and the geometrical parameters.

It is the supreme honour that a scientist can receive. Some of the giants in physics and chemistry have received this prize.

The Glassco Commission was really not interested in good science. It was interested in good accounting.

There is nothing wrong with good accounting, except that it does not necessarily lead to good science.

The visible and near-ultraviolet emission spectrum of the CH radical has been known ever since spectra of an ordinary Bunsen burner have been taken.

Interest in the pseudo-sciences has become extraordinary.

The citation for the 1971 Nobel Prize in Chemistry reads, ‘for contribution to the knowledge of electronic structures and geometry of molecules, especially free radicals,’ and therefore implies that the Prize has been awarded for a long series of studies extending practically over my whole scientific life.

Pursue science because it is knowledge, because it broadens our horizons. There is so much more to be discovered.

The CH radical is a very reactive radical which, under most conditions, has a very short lifetime.

Dealing with the health of people is more important than political considerations.

Every newspaper feels it must have an astrology column, and even in the Carleton University bookstore this morning, I found books on astrology for sale.

You try to maintain a neutral approach to your work, and not be too hard on yourself.

I have not been part of an active counterculture movement, as it is not the approach that I have personally pursued to create a qualitatively beneficial and meaningful impact on society.

The bipartisan approach filtered up through my typewriter. I used to say, “Mad takes on both sides.”

My thirty-seventh birthday had just come and gone, the end of 2008 was approaching, and I was constantly aware of how little I had managed to accomplish.

We look directly into our suffering rather than try to become happy. The happiness that arises from this approach is reliable.

Study and know that we are always a student of the craft well after we’ve completed any course of study… and approach the work as a servant, not a star.

It’s nice when people approach you to help.

The West would be well advised to change its approach towards failing states. At present, no major power can find the correct ways and means – and the numbers of failing states are increasing.