Roald Hoffmann

“I have tried to be a bridge between the two cultures, the arts and the sciences.”

“To be a chemist, you must be a visual person. You must be able to see the molecules.”

“I am a survivor, and I feel that I have a responsibility to tell the story.”

“Every bond is a compromise.”

“One of the things that is beautiful about science is that it is a collaborative enterprise.”

“The world is molecular. And the molecules are just beautiful.”

“I feel very Polish. I don't want to be anything else.”

“Chemistry is, on the surface, a science of substances. But on a deeper level, it's a science of transformation.”

“Storytelling is essential for science.”

“A molecule is a story.”

“I think the creative process is the same in art and science. It’s putting things together, seeing connections.”

“I love the tensions... between simplicity and complexity, between uniqueness and universality.”

“There's beauty in the logic of chemistry, and there's logic in the beauty of a poem.”

“Science is not done in a vacuum. It is a human activity, and it is subject to all the foibles of human beings.”