Top 1116 Prize Quotes & Sayings

It is a wonderful and unexpected honor to receive the Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel. Receiving this prize with Joseph Stiglitz and George Akerlof, whose work I have learned from and admired, makes it even more gratifying.

[On being a judge for the 1986 Booker Prize:] I got to the point where I couldn't read a laundry list without considering it for the Booker Prize.

National Review once opined, many years ago, that, every year, the Nobel peace prize should go to the U.S. secretary of defense: The American military is the number-one guarantor of peace in the world. But maybe something like a Nobel freedom prize would be a more appropriate award for Reagan than a peace prize.

The European and the North American consider that a book that has been awarded any kind of prize must be good; the Argentine allows for the possibility that the book might not be bad, despite the prize.

They gave me away as a prize once - a Win Tony Curtis For A Weekend competition. The woman who won was disappointed. She'd hoped for second prize - a new stove.

The Nobel Prize is worth $1.5 million, but that's not the issue. Do the distinguished scientists who win the Nobel Prize need the money? Probably not. The honor is more important the money, and that's the case with the prize for African leadership as well.

I'm not sure whether I could win a Nobel Prize or not, but the Nobel Committee called me, and, 'You got the Nobel Prize.' So, I was so, so happy, and I was so surprised.

We prize books, and they prize them most who are themselves wise.

At the age of 12 I won the school prize for Best English Essay. The prize was a copy of Somerset Maugham's 'Introduction To Modern English And American Literature.' To this day I keep it on the shelf between my collection of Forester's works and the little urn that contains my mother's ashes.

Tennis Australia really led the charge as far as upping the prize money and trying to do the right thing by the players. They also led the way so women have equal prize money in all the grand slams too.

Thanks to the high standing which science has for so long attain and to the impartiality of the Nobel Prize Committee, the Nobel Prize for Physics is rightly considered everywhere as the highest reward within the reach of workers in Natural Philosophy.

Competition exists to choose who gets the prize when the prize can’t be shared.

People ask me often [whether] the Nobel Prize [was] the thing you were aiming for all your life, and I say that would be crazy. Nobody would aim for a Nobel Prize because, if you didn't get it, your whole life would be wasted. What we were aiming at was getting people well, and the satisfaction of that is much greater than any prize you can get.

When Doris Lessing won the Nobel Prize for Literature at the age of 88, she was the oldest person ever to receive the prize and one of only 11 female winners in its history. Her award was the end of a very long journey from a remote farm in Rhodesia to a banquet at Stockholm's Stadshus, the grand city hall in Stockholm.

I prize the Depression, for instance, because I learned the value of things in the Depression that a way people who don't have to worry about such things never learned to prize it really, I believe.

If we offer a prize, so to speak, to anyone who manages to bring a country under his physical control - namely, that they can then sell the country's resources and borrow in its name - then it's not surprising that generals or guerrilla movements will want to compete for this prize. But that the prize is there is really not the fault of the insiders. It is the fault of the dominant states and of the system of international law they maintain.

My first reaction on being awarded the Nobel Prize was, actually, I thought of Fischer Black, my colleague. He unfortunately had passed away. And there was no doubt in my mind that if he were still alive, he would have been a co-recipient of the Nobel Prize.

The tremendous honour of the Nobel Prize is of the strongest incentive to me in my work, while the amount of the Prize will greatly simplify my task and provide me with much valuable help in my work.

I once won a second prize in a history concert. My parents came to the ceremony. Somebody else had won the prize for best all-around student. Afterwards my father said to me, 'Never, ever disgrace me like that again.' When I tell my Western friends, they are aghast. But I adore my father. It didn't knock my self-esteem at all.

A Pulitzer Prize is awaiting the journalist who can find an American who dies of hunger, and probably the Nobel Prize for literature as well.

In the end the great truth will have been learned that the quest is greater than what is sought, the effort finer that the prize (or rather, that the effort is the prize), the victory cheap and hollow were it not for the rigor of the game.

I know some people say "Keep your eyes on the prize," but I disagree. When your eyes are stuck on the prize, you're going to keep stumbling and crashing into things. If you really want to get ahead, you've got to keep your eyes focused on the path.

The only prize much cared for by the powerful is power. The prize of the general is not a bigger tent, but command.

Be it jewel or toy, not the prize gives the joy, but the striving to win the prize.

I do think of this prize as the GFP prize, and I happen to fortunately be one of the people that goes along for the ride.

The Nobel prize is unquestionably the most famous prize in the world, and very often, the prize is an object of prestige not only for a person but also for a research center, a country, or for a particular area of interest.

I received many prizes of course before the Nobel Prize and this is probably the last prize I get. But I felt when I see the patient and saying they were saved by the therapy we developed, that is the most moving, and also the time I feel my life has some meaning.

I believe that every Nobel Laureate has the feeling that this prize is really a gift - because nobody can or should work just for this prize.

I really prize my freedom more than work. I prize just being human and doing other things.

I've been religiously reading the O. Henry Prize anthologies every year since college, when I first began trying to write stories. Many of the authors whose work I cherish the most were people I first learned about through The O. Henry Prize Stories - and then I'd go search for their books.

One of my books, 'Rain Falling on My Face,' earned me the 39th Edogawa Ranpo prize. It's a very prestigious literary prize in Japan, mostly for mysteries and thrillers.

I wouldn't feel good about it at all. At the end of the day I'm here to win a team prize, and that's to win a championship, not an individual prize.

The citation for the 1971 Nobel Prize in Chemistry reads, 'for contribution to the knowledge of electronic structures and geometry of molecules, especially free radicals,' and therefore implies that the Prize has been awarded for a long series of studies extending practically over my whole scientific life.

I was absolutely convinced that I wouldn't win the Nobel Prize. My impression was that the Nobel Prize in Literature was given to people more or less affiliated with, let's say, socialist ideas, and that was not my case.

I'd like to win a Booker Prize for writing. A Nobel Peace Prize for my work in peace... and I think that'll probably do.

Last year I was a judge for a prize in England, the T.S. Eliot Prize, so I read everything that was published in England last year.

I've never really understood the desire people have to quantify a baby. "He's X big and Y long," As if the baby is a fish you're not sure you're going to keep. Or some prize potato you're hoping will win a prize at the county fair.

Concepts are vindicated by the constant accrual of data and independent verification of data. No prize, not even a Nobel Prize, can make something true that is not true.

The Booker Prize is a big, popular prize for big, popular books, and that's the way it should be.

The reward of running — of anything — lies within us … We focus on something external to motivate us, but we need to remember that it’s the process of reaching for that prize — not the prize itself — that can bring us peace and joy.

I think I'm comfortable making myself, or my speaker, larger than life if I can then cut myself off at the ankles. The way, in "My Major Prize," the speaker does this drippy performance of sadness and poetry for some unnamed prize committee, only he lets us know that it's all a wry game.

I won't lie, I didn't know there was a concert. I've always known about the Nobel Peace Prize and the different prizes given out for science and this and that, but I didn't know there was a concert the day after. When they said, 'You're going to perform in Norway for the Nobel Peace Prize concert,' I was like, 'All right, I'm there.'

Thank God! we are in the full enjoyment of all these privileges. But can we be taught to prize them too much? or how can we prize them equal to their value, if we do not know their intrinsic worth, and that they are not a gift bestowed upon us by other men, but a right that belongs to us by the laws of God and nature?

What is it? A prize or something? No. It's not a prize and I'm not a prize. But it's mine. It belongs to me and I can only give it away once, and I want to be so sure when it happens. I don't want to say that the first time for me was bad or it didn't mean a thing.

First prize was a week in Philadelphia. Second prize was two weeks.

The Nobel Peace Prize has become hopelessly politicized. I think it cheapens the prize itself.

[ Bob Dylan] should let the Nobel Prize Committee know if he is accepting it or not. He will not be the first one who declines the prize for political or personal reasons. He should just tell them.

I don't know what the big deal about Cracker Jack is. Did you ever go buy a pack of Cracker Jack, thinking you'd get a prize and find no prize in the box? (pause) Here's the pitch.

I think Bob Dylan showed us that songs can rise to the level of literature, and he proved it over and over again. That's why they keep trying to get him a Nobel Prize for literature: because there is no Nobel Prize for songwriting.

On a transcendental level, a film is not going to be better or worse because there's a prize behind it. The work will be what it is, with or without a prize.

I am honoured to join education innovators like Ms. Vicky Colbert, Dr. Madhav Chavan, and Sir Fazle Hasan Abed as the fourth WISE Prize for Education Laureate. I accept this prize on behalf of the million girls Camfed is committed to supporting through secondary education.

In a way, the Nobel Prize has been something of a pain in the neck, though there was at least one time that I got some fun out of it, Shortly after I won the Prize, Gweneth and I received an invitation from the Brazilian government to be the guests of honor at the Carnaval celebrations in Rio.

It is very difficult to find appropriate words to say 'thank you' for an honour like the Nobel Prize. It is the supreme honour that a scientist can receive. Some of the giants in physics and chemistry have received this prize.

Winning the Pulitzer is not that big a deal. I have seen hundreds of plays that have won the prize and you couldn't sit half way through it. The Pulitzer is a common prize that means very little.

I'm not interested in awards. I never have been. I don't think they are important. Don't get me wrong, if somebody gives me a prize, I thank them as gratefully as I know how, because it's very nice to be given a prize. But I don't think that awards ought to be sought.

As you all know first prize is a Cadillac El Dorado. Anyone wanna see second prize? Second prize is a set of steak knives. Third prize is you're fired.

As a Nobel Prize winner I cannot but regret that the award was never given to Mark Twain, nor to Henry James, speaking only of my own countrymen. Greater writers than these also did not receive the prize. I would have been happy - happier - today if the prize had been given to that beautiful writer Isak Dinesen.

Not many countries establish a prize for peace. The Seoul Peace Prize has its roots in the 1988 Summer Olympics when this country opened its doors to people and athletes from more than 160 countries. Korea did so in part because it believes in the power of sports for peace and development.

I don't like honors. ... I've already got the prize: the prize is the pleasure of finding the thing out, the kick in the discovery, the observation that other people use it. Those are the real things.

The Commonwealth Prize is about celebrating the Commonwealth and the special relationship we have with the ex-colonies - which is part guilt and part warmth - and the Booker Prize isn't an essential part of that, but it is part of that.