Quotes by the six Canadian Nobel laureates (0.0078% of the 768 winners), from The Impossible Takes Longer: The 1,000 Wisest Things Ever Said by Nobel Prize Laureates, published by Douglas & McIntyre in 2007. No one has ever had an idea in a dress suit.Frederick Banting MEDICINE, 1923

The distinction between offensive and defensive arms was a very simple one. If you were in front of them, they were offensive; if you were behind them, they were defensive.

Lester Pearson PEACE, 1957

The sole aim of science is the glory of the ­human spirit.Gerhard Herzberg CHEMISTRY, 1971

Your Majesties, Your Royal Highnesses,

Ladies and Gentlemen . . . I know of no other place where Princes assemble to pay their

respect to molecules . . . Because of you, our wives hesitate for just an instant before summoning us to do the dishes.

John Polanyi CHEMISTRY, 1986

All the people who do well work very hard. Nobody who has a record of achievement has been lazy about it.

Sidney Altman CHEMISTRY, 1989

I feel that my faith and my scientific work have mutually reinforced each other . . . The wondrous experience of understanding, perhaps understanding for the first time, something about the natural world is a deep religious experience.

Walter Kohn CHEMISTRY, 1998