Tom Lehrer - Richard Dawkins - Jocelyn Bell Burnell - Ron Paul - Times online - Horizon TV - Richard P Feynman - Glenn Beck - Doris Lessing - Saul Perlmutter - The Genius of Marie Curie TV - Ronaldo -
Political satire became obsolete when Henry Kissinger was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Tom Lehrer
Mother Teresa of Calcutta actually said, in her speech accepting the Nobel Peace Prize, ‘The greatest destroyer of peace is abortion.’ What? How can a woman with such cock-eyed judgement be taken seriously on any topic, let alone be thought seriously worthy of a Nobel Prize? Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion
Others were annoyed on my behalf. Beautiful Minds: Professor Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell, BBC 2010
People should be embarrassed ... Expanding wars – and get a peace prize. Ron Paul, re Obama
The award of this year’s Nobel peace prize to President Obama will be met with widespread incredulity, consternation in many capitals and probably deep embarrassment by the President himself.
Rarely has an award had such an obvious political and partisan intent. It was clearly seen by the Norwegian Nobel committee as a way of expressing European gratitude for an end to the Bush Administration, approval for the election of America’s first black president and hope that Washington will honour its promise to re-engage with the world.
Instead, the prize risks looking preposterous in its claims, patronising in its intentions and demeaning in its attempt to build up a man who has barely begun his period in office, let alone achieved any tangible outcome for peace ...
The Nobel committee has made controversial awards before. Some have appeared to reward hope rather than achievement: the 1976 prize for the two peace campaigners in Northern Ireland, Betty Williams and Mairead Corrigan, was clearly intended to send a signal to the two battling communities in Ulster. But the political influence of the two winners turned out, sadly, to be negligible.
In the Middle East, the award to Menachem Begin of Israel and Anwar Sadat of Egypt in 1978 also looks, in retrospect, as naive as the later award to Yassir Arafat, Shimon Peres and Yitzhak Rabin – although it could be argued that both the Camp David and Oslo accords, while not bringing peace, were at least attempts to break the deadlock.
Mr Obama’s prize is more likely, however, to be compared with the most contentious prize of all: the 1973 prize to Henry Kissinger and Le Duc Tho for their negotiations to end the Vietnam war. Dr Kissinger was branded a warmonger for his support for the bombing campaign in Cambodia; and the Vietnamese negotiator was subsequently seen as a liar whose government never intended to honour a peace deal but was waiting for the moment to attack South Vietnam. Times online article Michael Binyon 9th October 2009, ‘Comment: Absurd decision on Obama makes a mockery of the Nobel Peace Prize’
Bio-geneticist Dr Karry Mullis had won the Nobel Prize for inventing PCR, a revolutionary technique for multiplying tiny amounts of DNA for use in genetic research. A creative breakthrough he claims came from psychedelic drug use. Horizon: Psychedelic Science, BBC 1997
If I could explain it to the average person, I wouldn’t have been worth the Nobel Prize. Richard P Feynman
Please stop teaching my children that everyone gets a trophy just for participating. What is this, the Nobel Prize? Not everybody gets a trophy. Glenn Beck
The Nobel Prize is run by a self-perpetuated committee. They vote for themselves and get the world’s publishing industry to jump to their tune. Doris Lessing
Probably the single most important thing about the Nobel Prize for most people is whether they get the coveted parking space on campus. Saul Perlmutter
66,759. Marie Curie: She is the only person to win two Nobel prizes in two different sciences. The Genius of Marie Curie - The Woman Who Lit Up the World
I want to win the Nobel Peace Prize – and I’m going to fight as hard as I can to make it happen. Ronaldo