“All the instruments of percussion known to European science are essentially nonmusical and can only be tolerated in open air music or in large orchestras where a little noise more or less makes no difference.”

The whole edifice of modern physics is built up on the fundamental hypothesis of the atomic or molecular constitution of matter.

I have always thought it a great privilege to have as my colleague in the Palit Chair of Chemistry such a distinguished pioneer in scientific research and education in Bengal as Sir Prafulla Ray.

We must teach science in the mother tongue. Otherwise, science will become a highbrow activity.

Towards the end of February 1928, I took the decision of using brilliant monochromatic illumination obtained by the aid of the commercially available mercury arcs sealed in quartz tubes.

The Sensations of Tone.’ As is well known, this was one of Helmholtz’s masterpieces.

In the first English class I attended, Prof. E. H. Elliot, addressing me, asked if I really belonged to the Junior B. A. class, and I had to answer him in the affirmative. He then proceeded to inquire how old I was.

Is there any more encouraging sign than to see an Indian, who has never been to a university, like our friend Mr. Asutosh Dey here, for example, carrying out original work and finding it recognized by the foremost societies of the world?

We begin to realise that the molecular scattering of light in liquids may possess an astronomical significance, in fact contribute in an important degree to the observed albedo of the earth.

It was my great good fortune, while I was still a student at college, to have possessed a copy of an English translation of his great work.

And it was this belief which led to the subject becoming the main theme of our activities at Calcutta from that time onwards.

It was the late Dr. Mahendra Lal Sircar who, by founding the Indian Association for the Cultivation of Science, made it possible for the scientific aspirations of my early years to continue burning brightly.

This was the reason why I decided, as far as possible, not to accept money from the government.

I would like to tell the young men and women before me not to lose hope and courage.

I think what is needed in India today is the destruction of that defeatist spirit.

It seemed, indeed, that the study of light-scattering might carry one into the deepest problems of physics and chemistry.

Success can only come to you by courageous devotion to the task lying in front of you.

In ‘Insurgent’ we realise how large the world really is

We project ourselves into the future through our children; we grow rich, famous, ever larger; we develop compulsive protective rituals; or we embrace an impregnable belief in an ultimate rescuer.

The Jewish spirit, which was responsible for the alliance of large-scale capital with Marxism and was the driving force behind so many anti-Spanish revolutionary agreements, will not be got rid of in a day.

The body of the Earth, large, sluggish and inapt for motion, is not to be disturbed by movement (especially three movements), any more than the Aetherial Lights [stars] are to be shifted.

An investor who proposes to ignore near-term market fluctuations needs greater resources for safety and must not operate on so large a scale, if at all, with borrowed money.

My own belief is that there is hardly anyone whose sexual life, if it were broadcast, would not fill the world at large with surprise and horror.

Given a thimbleful of [dramatic] facts we rush to make generalizations as large as a tub.

Rather, love is a way of being, a “giving to,” not a ‘falling for”; a mode of relating at large, not an act limited to a single person.