I lost all respect for angstroms. - Heinrich Rohrer

We live of novelty in science. So when you do something new, you have to overcome certain beliefs that it cannot be done, that it's not interesting and so on.

The coming nanometer age can, therefore, also be called the age of interdisciplinarity.

To my knowledge significant progress has never been born of competition. … In science, being 'better' than others is of little practical value. Examples of how absurd the idea of scientific competition is are abundant.