The Impossible Takes Longer: The 1,000 Wisest Things Ever Said by Nobel Prize Laureates.

Steve Pitt is a Toronto-based freelance writer and an award-winning journalist. He has written many young adult and children's books, including Day of the Flying Fox: The True Story of World War II Pilot Charley Fox.

“The difficult is what takes a little time, the impossible is what takes longer,” quipped Nobel Prize laureate Fridtjof Nansen, winner of the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1922. Nansen was an Arctic explorer, scientist, diplomat, and humanitarian who managed to convince the anti-Bolshevik west to send enough food to save more than 7 million Russians during the great famine of 1921. Nansen’s comment gives you an idea of the essence of this book; quotes from people who have made an extraordinary difference in our world and have been awarded the Nobel Prize. Many of the people in this book were people of science, career politicians, world leaders, and famous writers, but other Nobel Prize winners have included a nun, a monk, and an electrician.

The quotes range greatly in tone. Some are controversial, such as a Nobel laureate for physics declaring, “I have made a discovery. A very great discovery; all that philosophers have ever written is drivel.” Some comments are profound, such as Shimon Peres, winner of the 1994 Peace Prize: “The vision for the future should shape the agenda for the present.” Some are just plain fun. When physics laureate Paul Duriac was asked what he best liked about America, his one-word answer was “Potatoes.”

The content is divided into loose categories such as “Achievements”, “Beliefs,” “Human Qualities,” “Emotions,” “Arts and Culture,” “Politics and Economics,” “Science and Technology,” and “Last Words.” Pratt precedes each chapter with a short introduction. Each larger category is further sub-divided into smaller sections. The “War and Peace” chapter, for example, includes subchapters on “War and Conflict,” “Armies and Armament,” “Nuclear Weapons,” “The Holocaust,” and “Peace and Peacekeeping.” Even in the land of giants, some stand taller than others. For sheer number of quotes, Albert Camus, Ernest Hemingway, Albert Einstein, Samuel Beckett, Bertrand Russell, George Bernard Shaw, and Winston Churchill dominate with more than a dozen quotes each. This could lead to an accusation of a bias toward Dead White Males, but it should be remembered that Pratt had to work with the laureates he was given. White males dominated the Nobel Prize winner’s circle until very recently. Martin Luther King Jr., Desmond Tutu, Nelson Mandela, Aung San Suu Kyi, Yasser Arafat, the 14th Dalai Lama, and Kim Dae-Jung are included in this collection. Not surprisingly, the most outstanding limelight hog is Sir Winston Churchill (Literature, 1953) who was serving up sound bites long before anyone knew they existed. “The Americans will always do the right thing after trying all other alternatives”; “History will be kind to me because I intend to write it”; or “Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry away as if nothing had happened” are just a few of his three dozen plus gems found in this book. A references chapter in the back provides sources for the quotes used in this book. There are also three appendices. The first is a short biography of Alfred Nobel and the creation of his Nobel Prize. The second appendix lists all Nobel Prize winners from 1901 to 2006. The third appendix is a compilation of short, one-paragraph biographies of all laureates quoted in this book. David Pratt has done his homework and chosen his quotes well, which makes this book an informative and delightful read.