Our business is with life, not death.
George Wald

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.
George Wald

Since we have had a history, men have pursued an ideal of immortality.
George Wald

So-called defense now absorbs sixty per cent of the national budget, and about twelve per cent of the Gross National Product.
George Wald

The concept of war crimes is an American invention.
George Wald

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.
George Wald

The only point of government is to safeguard and foster life.
George Wald

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

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.
George Wald

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

The Vietnamese have a secret weapon. It's their willingness to die beyond our willingness to kill. In effect, they've been saying, You can kill us, but you'll have to kill a lot of us; you may have to kill all of us. And, thank heaven, we are not yet ready to do that.
George Wald

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.
George Wald

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.
George Wald

To know reality is to accept it, and eventually to love it.
George Wald

We are the products of editing, rather than of authorship.
George Wald

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.
George Wald

We have to get rid of those nuclear weapons.
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.
George Wald

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.
George Wald