"Basic research leads to surprises very often, and surprises sometimes lead to prizes."
-- David M. Lee, professor of physics, in an Associated Press story filed Dec. 8 from Stockholm, where he accepted his Nobel Medal on Dec. 10.
"In the past, executives liked to talk about stakeholders while really concentrating on shareholders. Now, they've come to believe that being concerned about wider interest groups actually works through to the bottom line."
-- Thomas Dyckman, dean of the Johnson Graduate School of Management, in the London Financial Times Nov. 13.
"The spring itself wasn't a record-breaker for rainfall, and neither was the summer or the fall -- it's just the accumulated effect of all the seasons of the year being wetter than normal."
-- Keith L. Eggleston, climatologist with the Northeast Regional Climate Center, talking about the fact that the Northeast is on a pace to be the wettest year since 1895, in an Associated Press story Dec. 6.
"People assume the social spotlight shines on them more brightly than it really does. Fewer people notice our bad hair days than we suspect."
-- Thomas Gilovich, professor of psychology, in the December issue of Psychology Today.
"You're going to have a tremendous outcry of individuals. The unique flavors will not be there, but that's the price you pay for safety."
-- Robert Gravani, professor of food science, discussing the possibility of the FDA ordering the pasteurization of fruit juices, in an Associated Press story that appeared in the Los Angeles Daily News on Nov. 12.
"I think it will be very useful -- not in the next decade but a century from now."
-- Joseph Burns, the Irving P. Church Professor of Engineering and professor of astronomy and of theoretical and applied mechanics, in a Dec. 3 Reuters news agency report on the discovery of ice on the moon.
"It shaped American foreign policy; it shaped American politics. It was the Hiss trial, among other [events], that triggered the McCarthy era. He was a symbol of the Ivy League establishment that [critics] claimed had sold the nation out with the New Deal and the postwar world."
-- Walter LaFeber, the Marie Underhill Noll Professor of American History, commenting on the death of Alger Hiss and the effect of his trial for spying, in the Baltimore Sun Nov. 16.
"If you know you need a new coat this winter, you could just go out and buy it when the first cool breeze hits or you could time it to a sale. Everybody's worst nightmare is you go out and buy something, and the next week it goes on sale and you could have saved a lot of money."
-- Martha Shortlidge from Cornell Cooperative Extension's Westchester office, in a wire story from the Gannett News Service that appeared in the Denver Post Nov. 9.