... it is shameful that there are so few women in science... In China there are many, many women in physics. There is a misconception in America that women scientists are all dowdy spinsters. This is the fault of men. In Chinese society, a woman is valued for what she is, and men encourage her to accomplishments yet she remains eternally feminine.

All women scientists should marry, rear children, cook, and clean in order to achieve fulfillment, to be a complete woman.

Don't be afraid of hard work. Nothing worthwhile comes easily. Don't let others discourage you or tell you that you can't do it. In my day I was told women didn't go into chemistry. I saw no reason why we couldn't.

I hadn't been aware that there were doors closed to me until I started knocking on them. I went to an all-girls school. There were 75 chemistry majors in that class, but most were going to teach it ... When I got out and they didn't want women in the laboratory, it was a shock . . . It was the Depression and nobody was getting jobs. But I had taken that to mean nobody was getting jobs . . . [when I heard] 'You're qualified. But we've never had a woman in the laboratory before, and we think you'd be a distracting influence.'

I hope when I get to Heaven I shall not find the women playing second fiddle.
(Shortly before her death)

Nobody . . . took me seriously. They wondered why in the world I wanted to be a chemist when no women were doing that. The world was not waiting for me.

She [Chien-Shiung Wu] is a slave driver. She is the image of the militant woman so well known in Chinese literature as either empress or mother.
(Chien-Shiung Wu was his student.)

The enchanting charms of this sublime science reveal only to those who have the courage to go deeply into it. But when a woman, who because of her sex and our prejudices encounters infinitely more obstacles that an man in familiarizing herself with complicated problems, succeeds nevertheless in surmounting these obstacles and penetrating the most obscure parts of them, without doubt she must have the noblest courage, quite extraordinary talents and superior genius.