American Rhetoric: Movie Speech

"Madame Curie" (1943)

Address to the Faculty of Science at the University of Paris on the 25th Anniversary of the Discovery of Radium

Even now, after twenty-five years of intensive research, we feel there is a great deal still to be done.

We have made many discoveries.

Pierre Curie, and the suggestions we have found in his notes and in thoughts he expressed to me, has helped to guide us to them.

But no one of us can do much. Yet, each of us, perhaps, can catch some gleam of knowledge which, modest and insufficient of itself, may add to man's dream of truth.

It is by these small candles in our darkness that we see before us, little by little, the dim outlines of that Great Plan that shapes the universe.

And I am among those who think that for this reason, science has great beauty and with its great spiritual strength will in time cleanse this world of its evils, its ignorance, its poverty, diseases, wars, and heartaches.

Look for the clear light of truth.

Look for unknown, new roads.

Even when man's sight is keener far than now, divine wonder will never fail him.

Every age has its own dreams. Leave, then, the dreams of yesterday.

You: Take the torch of knowledge and build the palace of the future.