Quotes from Marie Curie

All my mind was centered on my studies, which, especially at the beginning, were difficult. In fact, I was insufficiently prepared to follow the physical science course at the Sorbonne, for, despite all my efforts, I had not succeeded in acquiring in Poland a preparation as complete as that of the French students following the same course.

I never see what has been done; I only see what remains to be done.

I was taught that the way of progress is neither swift nor easy.

I am among those who think that science has great beauty.

You cannot hope to build a better world without improving the individuals.

I was taught that the way of progress was neither swift nor easy.

Pierre Curie came to see me and showed a simple and sincere sympathy with my student life. Soon he caught the habit of speaking to me of his dream of an existence consecrated entirely to scientific research, and he asked me to share that life.

Be less curious about people and more curious about ideas.

All my life through, the new sights of Nature made me rejoice like a child.

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.

Nothing in this world is to be feared... only understood.

It was like a new world opened to me, the world of science, which I was at last permitted to know in all liberty.

I am one of those who think like Nobel, that humanity will draw more good than evil from new discoveries.

We must not forget that when radium was discovered no one knew that it would prove useful in hospitals.

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.

In science we must be interested in things, not in persons.

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.

The various reasons which we have enumerated lead us to believe that the new radio-active substance contains a new element which we propose to give the name of radium.

Life is not easy for any for us.

If I see anything vital around me, it is precisely that spirit of adventure, which seems indestructible and is akin to curiosity.

In chemical terms, radium differs little from barium; the salts of these two elements are isomorphic, while those of radium are usually less soluble than the barium salts.

The first experiments on the biological properties of radium were successfully made in France, with samples from our laboratory, while my husband was living.

Sometimes I had to spend a whole day mixing a boiling mass with a heavy iron rod nearly as large as myself. I would be broken with fatigue at the day's end. Other days, on the contrary, the work would be a most minute and delicate fractional crystallization, in the effort to concentrate the radium.

We must have perseverance and above all confidence in ourselves.