🏅Nobel Lectures (1910-1919)

"Moreover, and above all, let us remember that words count only when they give expression to deeds, or are to be translated into them. The leaders of the Red Terror prattled of peace while they steeped their hands in the blood of the innocent; and many a tyrant has called it peace when he has scourged honest protest into silence. Our words must be judged by our deeds; and in striving for a lofty ideal we must use practical methods; and if we cannot attain all at one leap, we must advance towards it step by step, reasonably content so long as we do actually make some progress in the right direction." (Theodore Roosevelt, [Nobel lecture] 1910)

"Theories cannot claim to be indestructible. They are only the plough which the ploughman uses to draw his furrow and which he has every right to discard for another one, of improved design, after the harvest." (Paul Sabatier, "The Method of Direct Hydrogenation by Catalysis" [Nobel lecture] 1912) 

"The regularities in the phenomena which physical science endeavors to uncover are called the laws of nature. The name is actually very appropriate. Just as legal laws regulate actions and behavior under certain conditions but do not try to regulate all action and behavior, the laws of physics also determine the behavior of its objects of interest only under certain well-defined conditions but leave much freedom otherwise." (Eugene P Wigner, "Events, Laws of Nature, and Invariance principles", [Nobel lecture] 1914)

"The importance of accurate knowledge in a case of this sort was foreseen long ago by Plato, who perhaps drew his inspiration from yet more ancient knowledge, coming from wise men of the Far East. As I have often quoted, he said: “If from any art that which concerns weighing and measuring and arithmetic is taken away, how little is left of that art!” The implication of this wise saying as regards the study of atomic weights is clear; any increase in the accuracy of the determination of these quantities must of necessity add greatly to our insight into the profound mysteries with which chemistry has to deal." (Theodore W Richards,"Atomic Weights", [Nobel lecture] 1914) 

"An indispensable hypothesis, even though still far from being a guarantee of success, is however the pursuit of a specific aim, whose lighted beacon, even by initial failures, is not betrayed." (Max Planck, "The Genesis and Present State of Development of the Quantum Theory", [Nobel lecture] 1918)

"[...] even if the radiation formula should prove itself to be absolutely accurate, it would after all be only an interpolation…it would still only have, within the signifi cance of a happily chosen interpolation formula, a strictly limited value. For this reason, I busied myself, from then on, that is, from the day of its establishment, with the task of elucidating a true physical character for the formula [...]" (Max Planck, "The Genesis and Present State of Development of the Quantum Theory", [Nobel lecture] 1918)