# Marie Skłodowska-Curie's most famous words

From 'Radium should not enrich anyone' to the letter to her niece about silkworms and her diary after Pierre's death: Marie Skłodowska-Curie's words with their source, plus the ones most often attributed to her.

- 0 votes · 12 items
- Dec 14, 2025 · Aleksandra Piotrowska
- https://even.best/en/l/4650/marie-sk%C5%82odowska-curie-s-most-famous-words

## Top 12

1. **I am among those who think that science has great beauty.** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — Lecture 'The Future of Culture', Madrid, 1933.
2. **A scientist in his laboratory is not only a technician: he is also a child placed before natural phenomena that impress him like a fairy tale.** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — Lecture in Madrid, 1933.
3. **Radium should not enrich anyone. It belongs to all people.** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — On the decision not to patent the process for isolating radium.
4. **I will not accept any pension. I am young enough to earn a living for myself and my children.** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — Refusing a state pension after Pierre Curie's death, 1906.
5. **We Poles have no right to abandon our homeland while it is oppressed.** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — Her answer to Pierre Curie's proposal, 1894.
6. **I want to tell you, too, that I have been named to your chair, and there were fools who congratulated me.** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — Diary addressed to the late Pierre, 14 May 1906.
7. **Let each of us, like a silkworm, spin our cocoon without asking for explanations of why or what for.** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — Letter to her niece Hanna Szalay, 6 January 1913.
8. **In science we should be interested in things, not in persons.** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — Quoted in the collection 'Myślę, więc jestem…'.
9. **My dearest wish is the creation of a Radium Institute in Warsaw.** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — On the Radium Institute, opened in Warsaw in 1932.
10. **Sad books can only be borne when one is young.** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — Quoted by her daughter Ève Curie in the biography 'Madame Curie'.
11. **Life goes on somehow… even if it goes badly.** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — Quoted by Ève Curie in the biography 'Madame Curie'.
12. **Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood.** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — Attributed: hugely popular, but with no reliable source in her writings.

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