Molecules Quotes

• A composer is a guy who goes around forcing his will on unsuspecting air molecules, often with the assistance of unsuspecting musicians.

  Frank Zappa

  Music, Writing, Air

  Frank Zappa, Peter Occhiogrosso (1990). “Real Frank Zappa Book”, p.162, Simon and Schuster

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• Recognize that the very molecules that make up your body...are traceable to the crucibles that were once the centers of high mass stars that exploded their chemically rich guts into the galaxy, enriching pristine gas clouds with the chemistry of life. So that we are all connected to each other biologically, to the earth chemically and to the rest of the universe atomically.

  Neil deGrasse Tyson

  Stars, Clouds, Crucible

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• Life ... is a relationship between molecules.

  Linus Pauling

  Life, Science, Life Is

  Linus Pauling, Barclay Kamb (2001). “Linus Pauling: Selected Scientific Papers”, p.1168, World Scientific

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• We are all connected; To each other, biologically. To the earth, chemically. To the rest of the universe atomically.

  Neil deGrasse Tyson

  Beauty, Energy, Earth

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• Life is a relationship among molecules and not a property of any molecule.

  Linus Pauling

  Life Is, Property

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• Everything in the world began with a yes. One molecule said yes to another molecule and life was born.

  Clarice Lispector

  Life, Saying Yes, Novelists

  Clarice Lispector (1986). “The Hour of the Star”, p.11, New Directions Publishing

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• You look at the floor and see the floor. I look at the floor and see molecules.

  Dan Aykroyd

  Looks

  "Agony and Excesses of Stardom". San Francisco Chronicle: p. 16, March 4, 1986.

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• We may say that a basic substance is one which has a lone pair of electrons which may be used to complete the stable group of another atom, and that an acid is one which can employ a lone pair from another molecule in completing the stable group of one of its own atoms.

  Gilbert N. Lewis

  Groups, Atoms, Substance

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• I must confess that, at that time, I had absolutely no knowledge of the slowness of the relaxation processes in the ground state, processes which take place in collisions with the wall or with the molecules of a foreign gas.

  Alfred Kastler

  Wall, Relaxation, States

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• Traditional academic science describes human beings as highly developed animals and biological thinking machines. We appear to be Newtonian objects made of atoms, molecules, cells, tissues, and organs.

  Stanislav Grof

  Animal, Thinking, Cells

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• People don't realize that molecules themselves are somewhat hypothetical, and that their interactions are more so, and that the biological reactions are even more so.

  Kary Mullis

  People, Realizing, Reactions

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• Better biofuels are a really big deal. That means we can precisely engineer the molecules in the fuel chain and optimize them along the way. So, if all goes well, they're going to have designer bugs in warm vats that are eating and digesting sugars to excrete better biofuels. I guess that's better living through bugs.

  John Doerr

  Mean, Ties, Fuel

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• The magnitude of the atomic weight determines the character of the element, just as the magnitude of the molecule determines the character of a compound body.

  Dmitri Mendeleev

  Character, Elements, Weight

  Dmitri Ivanovich Mendeleev (2013). “Mendeleev on the Periodic Law: Selected Writings, 1869 - 1905”, p.175, Courier Corporation

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• The separate atoms of a molecule are not connected all with all, or all with one, but, on the contrary, each one is connected only with one or with a few neighbouring atoms, just as in a chain link is connected with link.

  August Kekule

  Science, Atoms, Links

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• We have come a long way on that old molecule DNA.

  Lewis Thomas

  Dna, Long, Way

  Lewis Thomas (1990). “A Long Line of Cells Collected Essays”

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• It does not seem, however, that organic chemists were much worried about barriers to rotation in organic molecules in general at that time because there was no technique available to demonstrate the phenomenon experimentally.

  Derek Barton

  Technique, Doe, Rotation

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• Today we have big, crude instruments guided by intelligent surgeons, and we have little, stupid molecules of drugs that get dumped into the body, diffuse around and interfere with things as best they can. At present, medicine is unable to heal anything.

  K. Eric Drexler

  Stupid, Intelligent, Medicine

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• One day I discovered that one could get the barrier to internal rotation in ethane approximately right using this method. This was the beginning of my work on organic molecules.

  Roald Hoffmann

  One Day, Rotation, Method

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• The actual atoms and molecules that make up my brain and body today are not the same ones that I was born with on September 8, 1954, a half-century ago this month.

  Michael Shermer

  Brain, Atoms, Half

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• On the basis of Lorentz's theory, if we limit ourselves to a single spectral line, it suffices to assume that each atom (or molecule) contains a single moving electron.

  Pieter Zeeman

  Moving On, Moved On, Atoms

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• Every idea is endowed of itself with immortal life, like a human being. All created form, even that which is created by man, is immortal. For form is independent of matter: molecules do not constitute form.

  Charles Baudelaire

  Independent, Men, Ideas

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• A great deal of the universe does not need any explanation. Elephants, for instance. Once molecules have learnt to compete and to create other molecules in their own image, elephants, and things resembling elephants, will in due course be found roaming around the countryside ... Some of the things resembling elephants will be men.

  Peter Atkins

  Men, Roaming Around, Elephants

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• While the State becomes inflated and hypertrophied in order to obtain a firm enough grip upon individuals, but without succeeding, the latter, without mutual relationships, tumble over one another like so many liquid molecules, encountering no central energy to retain, fix and organize them.

  Emile Durkheim

  Order, Energy, Succeed

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• The study of mathematics is apt to commence in disappointment.

  Alfred North Whitehead

  Disappointment, Math, Study

  Alfred North Whitehead (1958). “An Introduction to Mathematics”, p.1, New York : Oxford University Press, 1958 [c1948]

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• Why are atoms so small? ... Many examples have been devised to bring this fact home to an audience, none of them more impressive than the one used by Lord Kelvin: Suppose that you could mark the molecules in a glass of water, then pour the contents of the glass into the ocean and stir the latter thoroughly so as to distribute the marked molecules uniformly throughout the seven seas; if you then took a glass of water anywhere out of the ocean, you would find in it about a hundred of your marked molecules.

  Erwin Schrodinger

  Ocean, Home, Science

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