Quotes from Ahmed Zewail

Everybody in the world is - is ready for liberty. It's a question of how you do it.

Like everywhere in the world, people of the Middle East aspire to liberty and justice. They wish to have a better life and a decent education for their children.

Although there exist in the world today some microbes of the soul, such as discrimination and aggression, science was and still is the core of progress for humanity and the continuity of civilization.

As someone from, and directly involved with, this part of the world, I am convinced Arabs are qualified to regain their glorious past.

Syria may appear to be a small country, but it is just the type of entangled conflict that can lead to a world catastrophe. It does not take much imagination to see Syria as the Sarajevo of the 21st century, leading to world war.

After World War II, scientific research in the U.S. was well supported. In the 1960s, when I came to America, the sky was the limit, and this conducive atmosphere enabled many of us to pursue esoteric research that resulted in America winning the lion's share of Nobel Prizes.

The mosque was the neighbourhood house of worship, but it was also the place where my high school friends and I came to study.

I am not one of the new media experts working all the time with my computers and the PowerPoints and things of that sort.

There is no 'master plan' on the road to the Nobel Prize. It represents a lot of hard work, a passion for that work and... being in the right place at the right time. For me, that place was Caltech.

Egypt does not possess rich natural resources. Its agricultural area is relatively small - less than 10 per cent of the total land. Its growth relies on tourism, Suez Canal tariffs, and foreign investment.

As a boy, it was clear that my inclinations were toward the physical sciences. Mathematics, mechanics, and chemistry were among the fields that gave me a special satisfaction.

America was and still is able to make the necessary changes to maintain research institutions that are the envy of the world.

Some consider the removal of Dr. Mohammed Morsi a coup by the army against an elected president. Others treat it as the second revolution, or the continuation of the January 25, 2011, revolution.

In addition to the peace treaty between Egypt and Israel, which is crucial to U.S. interests both domestically and in the Middle East, the U.S. has had and will continue to need Egypt's collaboration in the war on terrorism.

Human resources are just tremendous in Egypt, but we need the science base; we need the correct science base.

Reading was and still is my real joy.

The universe at large is full of questions that we still don't know anything about, and there will be always young people, brilliant, who are going to make new discoveries.

I teach at Caltech and oversee a research laboratory there. In general, I find that the majority of young people are excited by the prospects of research, but they soon discover that in the current market, many doctorate-level scientists are holding temporary positions or are unemployed.

The youth movement is aware that old visions can not take Egypt into the future.

In adapting to life in the melting pot of America, I discovered that the same soft power of science has a huge influence in building bridges between cultures and religions - and has the potential to do so with the Muslim world.

In the Middle East, it is clear that peace will never be reached without solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. A two-state solution must be found and enforced.

Egypt had the first constitution in the Middle East that allowed for liberty. And it had democracy.

Our femtosecond snapshots can examine a molecule at discrete instants in time.

Once we understand how molecules are formed, we can manipulate them. If you can manipulate molecules, you can manipulate genes and matter, you can synthesize new material - the implications are just unbelievable.