Benzene Quotes

• I would trade all my experimental works for the single idea of the benzene theory.

  August Wilhelm von Hofmann

  Ideas, Theory, Trade

  "Hofmann und die Deutsche Chemische Gesellschaft" by B. L. Lepsius, Berichte der Deutschen Chemischen Gesellschaft, (p. 51), 1918.

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• If you own a chemical plant and leak a little benzene, you're in big trouble because everyone knows how carcinogenic it is. But coming out of a tailpipe? The government never does anything about that.

  R. James Woolsey, Jr.

  Government, Doe, Littles

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• I was working with these very long-chain ... extended-chain polymers, where you had a lot of benzene rings in them. ... Transforming a polymer solution from a liquid to a fiber requires a process called spinning. ... We spun it and it spun beautifully. It [Kevlar] was very strong and very stiff-unlike anything we had made before. I knew that I had made a discovery. I didn't shout "Eureka!" but I was very excited, as was the whole laboratory excited, and management was excited, because we were looking for something new. Something different. And this was it.

  Stephanie Kwolek

  Strong, Science, Discovery

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• All the more recent work on alkaptonuria has... strengthened the belief that the homogentisic acid excreted is derived from tyrosin, but why alkaptonuric individuals pass the benzene ring of their tyrosin unbroken and how and where the peculiar chemical change from tyrosin to homogentisic acid is brought about, remain unsolved problems.

  Archibald Garrod

  Unbroken, Acid, Peculiar

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• My idea of storytelling is - I wouldn't say it's religious but I would say it's spiritual. You know, the chemist Friedrich August Kekule worked for twenty years trying to figure out the structure of the benzene ring, and he couldn't do it. And then one night he was sleeping and he had a vision of a snake swallowing its tail. So he told his students about it and they said, 'Not bad, you go to sleep and you wake up with that.' And he said, 'Visions come to prepared spirits.' The way Billy Wilder put it was 'The muse has to know where to find you.'

  David Milch

  Spiritual, Religious, Sleep

  "The Misfit". Interview with Mark Singer, www.newyorker.com. February 14, 2005.

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• Directors are always changing things at the last minute. Actors will do a scene, and the director will say, ‘Okay, that was perfect, but this time, Bob, instead of saying “What’s for dinner?” you say, “Wait a minute! Benzene is actually a hydrocarbon!” And say it with a Norwegian accent. Also, we think maybe your character should have no arms.

  Dave Barry

  Character, Thinking, Should Have

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