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Linus Pauling
Nobel Prizes in Chemistry and Peace
In the third term of my freshman year, when my mother was no longer sending me money, I was able to make 25 dollars a month -- which was barely enough for me to get by with -- by working 100 hours a month chopping wood and cutting up quarters of beef for the girls' dormitory. Chopping wood for the wood burning stoves in the kitchen of the girls' dormitory and cutting the beef for them and mopping the kitchens every night. And, in order to do this, to work 100 hours a month at a job for 25 cents an hour and to keep up with my studies, it was necessary that I not waste any hours during the day. So, I think I developed the habit of working.
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Linus Pauling
Nobel Prizes in Chemistry and Peace
I was asked to speak at the honors convocation at Washington University in St. Louis. During the preceding months there had been additional information released about damage done by radioactivity from testing of nuclear weapons, and by the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs. So, my talk was about that. It got a tremendous response from the audience when I said, "We have to stop the testing of nuclear weapons in the atmosphere because hundreds of thousands of unborn children and people now living are being damaged." So with two other professors, Barry Commoner and Ted Condon, I decided to write a petition. The next day we met, each of us had written a version of the petition, and I think mine was, essentially, the one selected by the three of us. We sent immediately, mimeographed it, and sent it out to 25 scientists that we knew. They all sent it right back, signed. So then I got back to Pasadena and my wife and I and some of our students and other people in the lab got busy and sent out hundreds of copies with the names of these first 25 signers -- or perhaps there was twenty-five, the three of us and 22 others. And, within a month or two I had 2,000 signatures from American scientists which I presented to Dag Hammarskjold. Scientists from all over the world began signing this petition. Originally, it was a petition by American scientists, but then it became a petition by world scientists. I think it was about 9,000 signatures that I gave, my wife and I gave to Dag Hammarskjold and ultimately, about 13,000 scientists all over the world had signed this petition. So, that had a great effect and I think even on President Kennedy because a couple of years later he gave a speech about a need for a treaty limiting bomb testing and of course pretty soon this treaty was made.
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Shimon Peres
President of Israel
I started to work day and night, listening to all walks of life in our economy, and there were three or four things that I learned immediately, that in a democracy, you have two groups of decision making: the political parties -- they are good for politics -- and the economic partnership, which is detached from politics. The economy is not being run by parties, but by three factors in the society: government, employees, and employers. So leave the parties aside and try to see if you can reach an agreement among the three. Don't be in a haste to declare a plan, and then discover that one or two are against it. It will be extremely difficult to do so, particularly if the demands are very, very heavy.
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Shimon Peres
President of Israel
Now, every important decision has to go through a long avenue of disappointments, of setbacks, of troubles. I am totally unimpressed. I would be surprised if it would go smoothly. Somebody said, "You are as great as your crawl." If you want to achieve something important, you have to fight and crawl for it under very uncomfortable conditions and circumstances. And then again, when you win a war, your people are united and applaud you. When you make peace, your people are doubtful and resentful. To negotiate peace is to negotiate with your own people, not with your opponent, and your own people say, "My God, why did you give up so much? Why were you in a hurry? Why didn't you think this and that?" Well, if you think this and that, and you won't to be in a hurry, still you have to pay the price, because peace has a price as war has a price. The difference is that the price of war is unavoidably accepted. The price of the cost of peace cannot be measured.
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Sidney Poitier
Oscar for Best Actor
I said to myself, "How did he know that I was a dishwasher?" He suspected. I said, "I didn't tell him that. I didn't say anything about dishwashing." That was one thing I wouldn't have told him. And I realized then and there that what he said was his perception of my worth. He perceived me to be of no value beyond something that I could do with my hands. And while he was correct in his anger to characterize me that way, I was offended. I was offended deeply. And I said to myself, "I have to rectify that. I have to show him that he was wrong about me." I decided then and there that I was -- this is a wild decision I made, of course, but I did decide then, at that moment, on that street, that I am going to be an actor just to show him that he was wrong about me. And then I would give up the acting, because what do I want to be an actor for? I committed myself to that. That goes to show you that I was a rather peculiar kid. Luckily, I wasn't around psychiatrists and all that kind of stuff, because they probably would have marked me as a guy who was a little off his rocker.
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Sidney Poitier
Oscar for Best Actor
Sidney Poitier: I continued working as a dishwasher, and I learned that there were no other theatrical groups in Harlem at that time of the same caliber as was the American Negro Theatre. And I decided that I wanted to -- no, I learned that they had a school system where they taught acting and stuff. So I wanted to get in there. I also learned that there were some very prestigious black actors and actresses who were affiliated with this. So I set my sights there. And I learned that they had auditions every three, six months or so. So I decided that I would go there and take an audition.
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Sidney Poitier
Oscar for Best Actor
I went in and I auditioned for them. And they said, "Thank you." They said, "We'll let you know." And they did, indeed, let me know. And the note came that I wasn't selected. I was crestfallen. So, I couldn't give it up. So I went back to them. I walked in and there was a lady at the desk. And I said, "I took an audition the other day, and I wasn't accepted." I said, "However, I'm here today to ask if this is a possibility." And she said, "What?" I said, "I noticed that you don't have a janitor." And I said, "I will do the janitor work for you because it's not a big deal, you know, you have a fairly small place here and stuff. I will do the janitor work for you in exchange for letting me study here."
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Sidney Poitier
Oscar for Best Actor
I left the theater after I came off, saying to myself, "That's it, I tried, I am not gonna be an actor. I don't have the gift. And it's silly for me to be (doing) this. Okay, I did it, I've stuck to it, and I don't have it." So I left, and I went walking about in New York City. And on my way home, about 11:30, 12 o'clock at night, I'm on my way to my room where I had my residence, I decided to pick up the newspapers, and I picked up, I guess, The Daily News. And there were, believe it or not, there were 13 major newspapers in New York City at that time. Anyway, in three or four of them, I was mentioned very favorably. Well my dear, being -- well, being, being, being -- I changed my mind. I wasn't gonna quit the business so quickly!
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