Top 15 Albert Szent-Györgyi Quotes

Psalmus Humanus
My Lord, Who are You? ...
Are you the Universe itself?
Or the Law which Ruled it? ...
Are you the maker, or did I shape You,
That I may share my loneliness and shun my responsibility?
God! ...I am calling to You, for I am in trouble,
Frightened of myself and my fellow men! ...

[B]rutalizing wars and military life... are capable of turning decent fellows into ers who can shoot women and children down in cold blood.

The great hope of mankind is still the United Nations.

The battle... is for the minds of men; the outcome... does not depend on numbers of missiles, but on the question of which system can raise life higher, give more happiness... and raise the great undeveloped masses out of their misery. ...Now there are two parties: democracy and communism. Why not embark on a noble competition by showing which... can create a better, freer, happier life?

I am not dreaming of a Utopia, only of a world in which problems are not resolved by force but by intelligence, good will and equity; a world in which killing, no matter the reason, and the destruction of a fellow man's life or home, is a crime; a world in which our youth in which our youth will not have to spend their years studying organized manslaughter, in which neither force nor megatons nor poison gases will decide a nation's standing but the sum of its knowledge, its ethics, the gifts it makes to mankind, the happiness it gives to men, the measure in which it lifts human life.

[T]here is only one medicine that will be effective against drug use: a livible, a restoration of faith in life—its dignity, value and longevity. Police raids and jail terms are not the answer.

Out children came into this world with "clean and empty minds." What they learn... is markedly different from... children of the pre-War world. Today's adults look... through glasses of pre-War and pre-scientific values. They think... all the world needs a little bit of patching... The result... we get deeper... into trouble. The modern scientific revolution had made all human s age faster... as a consequence we have a hypocritical world... Our youth rejects this anachronism wholesale. ...They find everything a lie. The great political parties... out for profit and power, the military for domination, fattening itself with their young bodies... churches preaching love but raising no voice against the slaughter of undeveloped people... driving the world toward overpopulation... resisting family planning... always on the side of power. And they see while half of the children of the world go to sleep hungry... we spend hundreds of billions to raise our stack of nuclear bombs and missiles... They see... most political leaders... mindful only of... re-election... keeping power... with arguments which should be rejected by the simplest logic, refuting the great ideals on which our country was built.

Science is life-oriented. ...[A]rmies and armaments are death-oriented. Armies are instruments of organized manslaughter... All its tools are the tools of death... instruments of killing. ...[A] society dominated by the military is death-centered, as pointed out by in his famous Moratorium Speech.

Even pure truth, which has no application... elevates life.

The primary aim of science is to find... new truth. The search is the more successful the more it is directed towards... truth for its own sake, regardless of... possible use or application. ...If everything given to us by research were to be taken away, civilization would collapse and we would stand naked, searching for caves again.

DNA... is the most wonderful thing in the world... Mankind went through epidemics, famine, and...trials, yet nature kept this... intact, because all life depends on it. ...[M]an has found a means to damage it. High energy radiation does so. ...There may ...be survivors after after an atomic war, but those... will be unable to produce a healthy progeny. Their progeny will be beset by abnormalities, monstrosities and diseases... and there will be no way back.

Between the two world wars, at the heydey of Colonialism, force reigned supreme. ...[I]t was natural for the weaker to lie down before the stronger. ...Gandhi, chasing out of his country... the greatest military power on earth... taught the world that there are higher things than force, higher even than life... [H]e proved that force had lost its suggestive power... information which did not reach the Pentagon or the government: we cannot win in win in Viet Nam because the people are willing to die faster than we can kill them.

From on high a human life must look very small, a notion that moved Walt Whitman to sing about the arrogance and audacity of elected government officials. ...Unfortunately, this collective code of morals... [w]e all share... as soon as... we participate in government... when we go to the polls to elect hawks and vote the endless billions for war and... formidable machines for killing and destruction, and then go to church and ask for God's blessing.

Collective human suffering easily becomes an abstraction... being unable to multiply death or suffering by 100,000. This... is a number, an abstraction. One death is a tragedy. 100,000 deaths are statistics. So it must also seem to men in high offices.

It is probably this dual code of morals which underlies the break in... many leading politicians who begin their political efforts with the desire to improve the lot of their fellow men. Once they reach the top they tend to exchange their individual code of morals for the collective one... to serve abstract ideas, which have little to do with their people's well being, and they make war.