Wilhelm Rontgen quotes:

I did not think; I experimented.

For me photography was the means to the end, but they made it the most important thing. (On the discovery of X-ray photography.)

Great discoveries are made accidentally less often than the populace likes to think.

If the hand be held between the discharge-tube and the screen, the darker shadow of the bones is seen within the slightly dark shadow-image of the hand itself... For brevity's sake I shall use the expression 'rays'; and to distinguish them from others of this name I shall call them 'X-rays'.

Röntgen has familiarized us with an order of vibrations of extreme minuteness compared with the smallest waves with which we have hitherto been acquainted, and of dimensions comparable with the distances between the centers of the atoms of which the material universe is built up; and there is no reason to suppose that we have here reached the limit of frequency.

There is much to do, and I am busy, very busy.