Nothing is less predictable than the development of an active scientific field.

The usual designation of the magnitude scale to my name does less than justice to the great part that Dr. Gutenberg played in extending the scale to apply to earthquakes in all parts of the world.

Don't wait for extraordinary circumstance to do good; try to use ordinary situations.

As seismologists gained more experience from earthquake records, it became obvious that the problem could not be reduced to a single peak acceleration. In fact, a full frequency of vibrations occurs.

Only fools, liars, and charlatans predict earthquakes

The rose does not bloom without thorns. True, but would that the thorns did not outlive the rose.

Spring makes everything young again except man.

Refining is inevitable in science when you have made measurements of a phenomenon for a long period of time.

I was lucky because logarithmic plots are a device of the devil.

If one introduces the concept of energy of an earthquake then that is a theoretically derived quantity.

I would walk - not run - to the nearest seismograph.

Big dreams are important because the awaken the giant that sleeps within you.

To begin again, every failure provides experience and opens the door of opportunity.

The church today has reduced the Christians to a level that has made them to be too weak to make anything happen.

We generate fears while we sit. We overcome them by action.

I don't really go to fashion parties; they're not my scene.

I think it's important to realize that we're all just human. I mean, nobody is supernatural.

Great God in Boots! – the ontological argument is sound!

The end of education is to see men made whole, both in competence and in conscience.

Well, I don't want to be king, I want to be real.

I still think that if the human race, or even one nation, could only get right about its God the rest would follow.