Rita Levi-Montalcini Quotes

I consider imperfection a Darwinian spring of natural selection. For example, present day insects are identical to those of six million years ago: they were already perfect, and there was no reason for them to change. Man was instead imperfect, and this was the proxy for his own development and evolution.

The allegations against Fidia cannot be true. The process for awarding Nobel prizes is so complex that it cannot be corrupted.

I have lost a bit of my sight, much of my hearing. At conferences, I can't see the presentations and can't hear well. But I think more now than when I when I was twenty. The body can do whatever it likes. I am not the body: I am the mind.

I'm an atheist: I don't know what it means to believe in God.

After centuries of dormancy, young women can now look toward a future moulded by their own hands.

Rare are those people who use the mind, few use the heart and really unique are those who use both.

Those who are lucky enough to have faith are granted with a great support in all stages of life. If instead of an anthropomorphous God, who rewards the good, one replaces the imperative chiselled in our genetic program that good deeds have a price in themselves, and that evil has its own punishment, both the non-believer and the believer will find the same answer.

Man is ruined by servility, conformism, obsequiousness, rather than aggressiveness, which is much more common in the environment than within ourselves.

Better to add life to your days than days to your life.

The women who changed the world never needed to show anything other than their own intelligence.

It is imperfection — not perfection — that is the end result of the program written into that formidably complex engine that is the human brain, and of the influences exerted upon us by the environment and whoever takes care of us during the long years of our physical, psychological and intellectual development.

In life one should never give in, surrender oneself to mediocrity, but rather move out of that grey area where everything is habit and passive resignation. One has to grow the courage to rebel.

The young need to know how lucky they are to have been born in this splendid country, Italy.

Everything came easy to me in life. I could always shake off difficulties, like water on a duck's wings.

I never had any hesitation or regrets in this sense. My life has been enriched by excellent human relations, work and interests. I have never felt lonely.