Alexander Fleming Quotes

• The unprepared mind cannot see the outstretched hand of opportunity.

  Alexander Fleming

  Opportunity, Hands, Mind

  276 Copy quote

• One sometimes finds what one is not looking for. When I woke up just after dawn on Sept. 28, 1928, I certainly didn’t plan to revolutionize all medicine by discovering the world’s first antibiotic, or bacteria killer. But I guess that was exactly what I did.

  Alexander Fleming

  Medicine, Dawn, World

  291 Copy quote

• One sometimes finds what one is not looking for.

  Alexander Fleming

  Science, Discovery, Luck

  188 Copy quote

• It is not difficult to make microbes resistant to penicillin in the laboratory by exposing them to concentrations not sufficient to kill them, and the same thing has occasionally happened in the body. The time may come when penicillin can be bought by anyone in the shops. Then there is the danger that the ignorant man may easily underdose himself and by exposing his microbes to non-lethal quantities of the drug make them resistant.

  Alexander Fleming

  Men, Drug, Ignorant

  265 Copy quote

• Nature makes penicillin; I just found it.

  Alexander Fleming

  Found, Penicillin

  155 Copy quote

• Penicillin cures, but wine makes people happy.

  Alexander Fleming

  Wine, People, Vineyards

  195 Copy quote

• For the birth of something new, there has to be a happening. Newton saw an apple fall; James Watt watched a kettle boil; Roentgen fogged some photographic plates. And these people knew enough to translate ordinary happenings into something new.

  Alexander Fleming

  Fall, Science, Fog

  202 Copy quote

• Penicillin sat on a shelf for ten years while I was called a quack.

  Alexander Fleming

  Dark, Years, Age

  108 Copy quote

• It is the lone worker who makes the first advance in a subject: the details may be worked out by a team, but the prime idea is due to the enterprise, thought, and perception of an individual.

  Alexander Fleming

  Team, Science, Discovery

  138 Copy quote

• (The discovery of penicillin) was a triumph of accident, a fortunate occurrence which happened while I was working on a purely academic bacteriological problem.

  Alexander Fleming

  Discovery, Triumph, Problem

  119 Copy quote

• I play with microbes. There are, of course, many rules to this play...but when you have acquired knowledge and experience it is very pleasant to break the rules and to be able to find something nobody has thought of.

  Alexander Fleming

  Playing Games, Able, Break

  Beverley Birch, Alexander Fleming (2002). “Alexander Fleming: Pioneer with Antibiotics”, Blackbirch PressInc

  101 Copy quote

• Suggested remedy for the common cold: A good gulp of whiskey at bedtime-it's not very scientific, but it helps.

  Alexander Fleming

  Health, Helping, Bedtime

  110 Copy quote

• If penicillin can cure those that are ill, Spanish sherry can bring the dead back to life.

  Alexander Fleming

  Food, Wine, Cooking

  104 Copy quote

• I have been trying to point out that in our lives chance may have an astonishing influence and, if I may offer advice to the young laboratory worker, it would be this-never neglect an extraordinary appearance or happening. It may be-usually is, in fact-a false alarm that leads to nothing, but may on the other hand be the clue provided by fate to lead you to some important advance.

  Alexander Fleming

  Science, Fate, Discovery

  "Molecular cloning: a laboratory manual". Book by Joseph Sambrook, Vol. 1, 153, 2001.

  78 Copy quote

• In my first publication I might have claimed that I had come to the conclusion, as a result of serious study of the literature and deep thought, that valuable antibacterial substances were made by moulds and that I set out to investigate the problem. That would have been untrue and I preferred to tell the truth that penicillin started as a chance observation. My only merit is that I did not neglect the observation and that I pursued the subject as a bacteriologist. My publication in 1929 was the starting-point of the work of others who developed penicillin especially in the chemical field.

  Alexander Fleming

  Science, Discovery, Deep Thought

  85 Copy quote

• It was astonishing that for some considerable distance around the mould growth the staphococcal colonies were undergoing lysis. What had formerly been a well-grown colony was now a faint shadow of its former self...I was sufficiently interested to pursue the subject.

  Alexander Fleming

  Distance, Science, Self

  49 Copy quote

• It has been demonstrated that a species of penicillium produces in culture a very powerful antibacterial substance which affects different bacteria in different degrees. Generally speaking it may be said that the least sensitive bacteria are the Gram-negative bacilli, and the most susceptible are the pyogenic cocci ... In addition to its possible use in the treatment of bacterial infections penicillin is certainly useful... for its power of inhibiting unwanted microbes in bacterial cultures so that penicillin insensitive bacteria can readily be isolated.

  Alexander Fleming

  Powerful, Degrees, Negative

  70 Copy quote

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