Quotes from George Wald

We've committed many war crimes in Vietnam - but I'll tell you something interesting about that. We were committing war crimes in World War II, before the Nuremberg trials were held and the principle of war crimes was stated.

We have fallen in love with the body. That's that thing that looks back at us from the mirror. That's the repository of that lovely identity that you keep chasing all your life.

A scientist lives with all reality. There is nothing better. To know reality is to accept it, and eventually to love it.

The concept of war crimes is an American invention.

In fact, death seems to have been a rather late invention in evolution. One can go a long way in evolution before encountering an authentic corpse.

The thought that we're in competition with Russians or with Chinese is all a mistake, and trivial. We are one species, with a world to win.

The trouble with most of the things that people want is that they get them.

Dropping those atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki was a war crime.

All War Departments are now Defense Departments. This is all part of the doubletalk of our time. The aggressor is always on the other side.

The concept of war crimes is an American invention.

It would be a poor thing to be an atom in a universe without physicists, and physicists are made of atoms. A physicist is an atom's way of knowing about atoms.

All War Departments are now Defense Departments. This is all part of the doubletalk of our time. The aggressor is always on the other side.

There is nothing worth having that can he obtained by nuclear war - nothing material or ideological - no tradition that it can defend. It is utterly self-defeating.

The Nobel Prize is an honor unique in the world in having found its way into the hearts and minds of simple people everywhere. It casts a light of peace and reason upon us all and for that I am especially grateful.

We are the products of editing, rather than authorship.

Science goes from question to question big questions, and little, tentative answers. The questions as they age grow ever broader, the answers are seen to be more limited.

A physicist is an atom's way of knowing about atoms.

A peacetime draft is the most un-American thing I know.

You see, every creature alive on the earth today represents an unbroken line of life that stretches back to the first primitive organism to appear on this planet; and that is about three billion years.

There's life all over this universe, but the only life in the solar system is on earth, and in the whole universe we are the only men.

The Nobel Prize is an honor unique in the world in having found its way into the hearts and minds of simple people everywhere. It casts a light of peace and reason upon us all; and for that I am especially grateful.

I think all of you know there is no adequate defense against massive nuclear attack.

As far as I know, the most conservative estimates of the number of Americans who would be killed in a major nuclear attack, with everything working as well as can be hoped and all foreseeable precautions taken, run to about fifty million.

The only use for an atomic bomb is to keep somebody else from using one.