I think failing the qualifying or the 11-plus actually hurt me more than I realised. After I'd become a professor of physics at the Open University, I suddenly thought, 'This is a bit silly.' So I suddenly became much more open about it. But I think probably I was hurt by the failure and didn't want to talk about it.

More Quotes by Jocelyn Bell Burnell

There is stardust in your veins. We are literally, ultimately children of the stars.

If it wasn't for the stars, we would not be here.

Britain has still got rather fewer astronomers than many other countries - the French and the Italians, for example. Why is that? I don't think those countries have better brains.

The more diverse a research group or a business, the more robust it is, the more flexible it is, and the better it succeeds.

You can convert the teachers, and you can convert the kids, but if they go home saying they want to be a physicist, and the parents question why they would want to do that, then it makes it very difficult.

People from different backgrounds approach a subject in different ways and ask different questions.