Rita Levi-Montalcini Quotes

“A child from the age of 2 or 3 absorbs what is in the environment and what generates hatred for anyone perceived to be different.”

“Above all, don't fear difficult moments. The best comes from them.”

“After a short period spent in Brussels as a guest of a neurological institute, I returned to Turin on the verge of the invasion of Belgium by the German army, Spring 1940, to join my family.

The two alternatives left then to us were either to emigrate to the United States, or to pursue some activity that needed neither support nor connection with the outside Aryan world where we lived. My family chose this second alternative. I then decided to build a small research unit at home and installed it in my bedroom.”

“An example of perfection in nature is the cockroach. It was living six million years before us and it may outlast us by that long. The brain of a cockroach is a splendid little engine. It doesn't evolve and it doesn't need to.

The human brain is a disaster from the point of view of perfection – great intellectual power combined with primitive emotional reactions. Human beings today are living with terrible risks of their own creation – nuclear weapons, the exploitation of natural resources, the great disparity between the wealthy and the poor.

Our brains will probably bring us to destruction, but we also have the possibility of growth, evolution. I prefer being a human. We shouldn't always look for perfection, in nature or our lives.”

“At 100, I have a mind that is superior – thanks to experience – than when I was 20.”

“At 20, I realized that I could not possibly adjust to a feminine role as conceived by my father and asked him permission to engage in a professional career. In eight months I filled my gaps in Latin, Greek and mathematics, graduated from high school, and entered medical school in Turin.”

“Everyone says that the brain is the most complex organ in the human body, as a doctor I could even agree. But as a woman I assure you that there is nothing more complex than the heart, even today its mechanisms are not known. In the reasoning of the brain there is logic, in the reasoning of the heart there are emotions.”

“Find first peace within yourself. Don't eat too much. Keep your brain active. Love.”

“I do not boast the historical fact of belonging to a human race that has suffered a lot as some kind of medal, nor have I ever tried to derive moral advantages or reparations.”

“I say to the young, be happy that you were born in Italy because of the beauty of the human capital, both masculine and feminine, of this country... No other country has such human capital.”

“I should thank Mussolini for having declared me to be of an inferior race. This led me to the joy of working, not any more unfortunately, in university institutes but in a bedroom.”

“I tell young people: Do not think of yourself, think of others. Think of the future that awaits you, think about what you can do and do not fear anything.”

“If I die tomorrow or in a year, it is the same — it is the message you leave behind you that counts.”

“If I had not been discriminated against or had not suffered persecution, I would never have received the Nobel Prize.”

“In life you must never resign yourself, surrender to mediocrity, but rather get out of that "grey area" where everything is habit and passive resignation, you must cultivate the courage to rebel”

“It is imperfection – not perfection – that is the end result of the program written into that formidably complex engine that is the human brain, and of the influences exerted upon us by the environment and whoever takes care of us during the long years of our physical, psychological and intellectual development.”

“It's not enough what I did in the past – there is also the future.”

“My life has been enriched by excellent human relations, work and interests. I have never felt lonely.”

“Progress depends on our brain. The most important part of our brain, that which is neocortical, must be used to help others and not just to make discoveries.”

“The body does whatever it wants. I am not my body; I am my mind.”

“The instruments, glassware, and chemical reagents necessary for my project were the same as my 19th-century predecessors had.”

“The process for awarding Nobel prizes is so complex that it cannot be corrupted.”

“Women who changed the world never felt the need to show anything but their intelligence.”

“You've been thinking about something without willing to for a long time... Then, all of a sudden, the problem is opened to you in a flash and you suddenly see the answer.”

“Babies did not attract me, and I was altogether without the maternal sense so highly developed in small and adolescent girls.”

“I told my mother of my decision to study medicine. She encouraged me to speak to my father... I began in a roundabout way... He listened, looking at me with that serious and penetrating gaze of his that caused me such trepidation, and asked whether I knew what I wanted to do.”

“My experience in childhood and adolescence of the subordinate role played by the female in a society run entirely by men had convinced me that I was not cut out to be a wife.”

“As for the presence of large NGF [nerve growth factor] sources in snake venom and male genital organs, they may be conceived as instances of bizarre evolutionary gene expression.”

“It is a wonder that I have not given up all my hopes, for they seem absurd and impossible. If I still hold on to them, in spite of everything, it is because I continue to believe in the inner goodness of man. I cannot build everything on foundations of death, misery and confusion.

I see the world gradually turning into a desert, I hear ever louder the roar that will kill us too, I share the pain of millions of men, but when I look at the sky I think that good will eventually win, that this merciless harshness will also cease. That order, peace and serenity will return. In the meantime I must keep my ideals intact; one day they will be able to be put into practice.”