Chemical Quotes
More Chemical Quotes
The nature of the chemical bond is the problem at the heart of all chemistry.
— New Chemistry? (1957) by the editors of Scientific American, p. 65
We are close to dead. There are faces and bodies like gorged maggots on the dance floor, on the highway, in the city, in the stadium; they are a host of chemical machines who swallow the product of chemical factories, aspirin, preservatives, stimulant, relaxant, and breathe out their chemical wastes into a polluted air. The sense of a long last night over civilization is back again.
norman mailer— Introducing our Argument
Mr. Hussein's dogged insistence on pursuing his nuclear ambitions, along with what defectors described in interviews as Iraq's push to improve and expand Baghdad's chemical and biological arsenals, have brought Iraq and the United States to the brink of war.
— "U.S. Says Hussein Intensifies Quest for A-Bomb Parts, New York Times, September 8, 2002
We may, I believe, anticipate that the chemist of the future who is interested in the structure of proteins, nucleic acids, polysaccharides, and other complex substances with high molecular weight will come to rely upon a new structural chemistry, involving precise geometrical relationships among the atoms in the molecules and the rigorous application of the new structural principles, and that great progress will be made, through this technique, in the attack, by chemical methods, on the problems of biology and medicine.
linus pauling— Nobel Lecture (11 December 1954)
Only when I began studying chemical engineering at Oregon Agricultural College did I realize that I myself might discover something new about the nature of the world.
linus pauling— Linus Pauling In His Own Words (1995) by Barbara Marinacci
Radioactivity is shown to be accompanied by chemical changes in which new types of matter are being continually produced. ... The conclusion is drawn that these chemical changes must be sub-atomic in character.
ernest rutherford— "The Cause and Nature of Radioactivity" in Philosophical Magazine (September 1902)
Any attempt to reduce the complex properties of biological organisms or of nervous systems or of human brains to simple physical and chemical systems is foolish.
kenneth boulding— p.20 (Ecodynamics: A New Theory Of Societal Evolution, 1978)
Litvak knew that charisma was a real if indefinable quality, a chemical fire that certain half-fortunate men gave off. Like any fire or talent, it was amoral, unconnected to goodness or wickedness, power or usefulness or strength.
michael chabon— Chapter 39 (The Yiddish Policemen’s Union (2007))
America has shown we are serious about removing the threat of weapons of mass destruction."..."We now know that Saddam Hussein had the capacity to produce weapons of mass destruction.... We know he had the necessary infrastructure because we found the labs and the dual-use facilities that could be used for these chemical and biological agents. We know that he was developing the delivery systems ballistic missiles that had been prohibited by the United Nations.
dick cheney— Fundraising dinner in New Mexico, February 6, 2004 [16]
The Soviet Union has long been proposing to outlaw chemical weapons, to remove them from the arsenals of states. We are prepared for resolution of this problem either on a global basis or piece by piece. As one of the first steps the USSR and the other socialist countries proposed in January 1984 that agreement be reached on ridding Europe of all types of chemical weapons.
konstantin chernenko— Quoted in "World Peace and the Developing Countries" - Page 126 - by Joseph Rotblat, Ubiratan D'Ambrosio - 1986
Thus, while I thought myself employed only in forming a Nomenclature, and while I proposed to myself nothing more than to improve the chemical language, my work transformed itself by degrees, without my being able to prevent it, into a treatise upon the Elements of Chemistry.
antoine lavoisier— p.xiv (Elements of Chemistry (1790))
We may lay it down as an incontestible axiom, that, in all the operations of art and nature, nothing is created; an equal quantity of matter exists both before and after the experiment; the quality and quantity of the elements remain precisely the same; and nothing takes place beyond changes and modifications in the combination of these elements. Upon this principle the whole art of performing chemical experiments depends: We must always suppose an exact equality between the elements of the body examined and those of the products of its analysis.
antoine lavoisier— p.226 (Elements of Chemistry (1790))
Consumption is also immediately production, just as in nature the consumption of the elements and chemical substances is the production of the plant.
karl marx— >Grundrisse, Introduction (1857/58, p. 10)
Interface, of the resonant interval as 'where the action is', whether chemical, psychic or social, involves touch.
Marshall McLuhan— p. 102 ("The Agenbite of Outwit")
I figure I've done what I could do, more or less, and now I'm going back to being a chemical; all we are is a lot of talking nitrogen, you know...
Arthur Miller— Leo in I Can't Remember Anything in Danger: Memory! : Two Plays (1987)
If, in the very intense electric field in the neighbourhood of the cathode, the molecules of the gas are dissociated and are split up, not into the ordinary chemical atoms, but into these primordial atoms, which we shall for brevity call corpuscles; and if these corpuscles are charged with electricity and projected from the cathode by the electric field, they would behave exactly like the cathode rays.
j. j. thomson— "Cathode rays" Philosophical Magazine, 44, 293 (1897)
It can scarcely be denied that the fundamental phenomena which first led mankind into chemical inquiries are those of combustion.
— William Crookes, Address as President to the Society for Psychical Research (29 January 1897)
I had discovered, early in my researches, that their doctrine was no mere chemical fantasy, but a philosophy they applied to the world, to the elements, and to man himself.
— William Butler Yeats in Rosa Alchemica
Now we know that the intricate DNA genetic code makes it possible for the individual to inherit not only simple physical characteristics, such as size, shape and chemical makeup, but also a whole set of propensities for particular social behavior which goes with a given physiology.
— Lionel Tiger, anthropologist, in "Male Dominance? Yes, Alas. A Sexist Plot? No.; Not a sexist plot", The New York Times (25 October 1970).
When finally interpreted, the genetic messages encoded within our DNA molecules will provide the ultimate answers to the chemical underpinnings of human existence.
— James D. Watson, one of the scientists credited with discovering the structure of the now famous DNA molecule. In "The Human Genome Project: past, present, and future." Science, 6 April 1990; 248:44-48.
Something is wrong with the system when our children, our students, struggling peacefully to have their voices heard, are answered by the spray of chemical weapons and the sting of a baton
— Sen. Alan Lowenthal, D-Long Beach, "Legislators demand campus change", The Davis Enterprise (2011)
"Cellular pathology is not an end if one cannot see any alteration in the cell. Chemistry brings the clarification of living processes nearer than does anatomy. Each anatomical change must have been preceded by a chemical one."
— Rudolf Virchow (1821–1902) cited in: Coper, H., Herken, H., 1963. Dtsch. Med. Wochenschr. 88,2025– 2036.
The nature of the chemical bond is the problem at the heart of all chemistry.
— Bryce Crawford in New Chemistry? (1957) by the editors of Scientific American, p. 65
Rock and roll is the hamburger that ate the world. Electric rock music creeps, like chemical seasoning, into everything. Rock and roll is mother's little helper on the housewife radio, plays across film sound-tracks and sells packaged goods.
— Peter York (1980) Style wars, p. 194
Liberal Arts may ultimately prove to be the most relevant learning model... People trained in the Liberal Arts learn to tolerate ambiguity and to bring order out of apparent confusion. They have the kind of sideways thinking and cross-classifying habit of mind that comes from learning, among other things, the many different ways of looking at literary works, social systems, chemical processes or languages.
— Roger Smith (1987) "The liberal arts and the art of management". In Educating managers: Executive effectiveness through liberal learning, ed. Johnston et al., 21-33. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass; As cited in: "Bachelor of Arts in Liberal Studies: What is Liberal Studies?" on georgetown.edu about bachelor of arts in liberal studies, 2013
What is found in biology is mechanisms, mechanisms built with chemical components and that are often modified by other, later, mechanisms added to the earlier ones. While Occam's razor is a useful tool in the physical sciences, it can be a very dangerous implement in biology.
— Francis Crick (1988) What Mad Pursuit
There is no question that Iraq possesses biological and chemical weapons and that he seeks to acquire additional weapons of mass destruction, including nuclear weapons. That is not in debate. I also agree with President Bush that Saddam Hussein is a threat to peace and must be disarmed, to quote President Bush directly.
— Senator Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) - Congressional Record , October 8, 2002
[I]f you allow someone like Saddam Hussein to get nuclear weapons, ballistic missiles, chemical weapons, biological weapons, how many people is he going to kill with such weapons? He's already demonstrated a willingness to use these weapons; he poison gassed his own people. He used poison gas and other weapons of mass destruction against his neighbors. This man has no compunctions about killing lots and lots of people.
— Vice President Al Gore - Larry King Live, December 16, 1998
