quotes in chemistry

Chemists are a strange class of mortals, impelled by an almost maniacalimpulse to seek their pleasures amongst smoke and vapour, soot and flames,poisons and poverty, yet amongst all these evils I seem to live so sweetlythat I would rather die than change places with the King of Persia." -- Johann Joachim Becher, Physica subterranea (1667)
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All that glitters may not be gold, but at least it contains free electrons. -- John Desmond Baernal (Irish physicist, 1901-1971) in a Lecture at Birkbeck college, University of London, 1960.
A tidy laboratory means a lazy chemist. -- Jöns Jacob Berzelius (Swedish chemist,1779-1848)

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... chemistry is a trade for people without enough imagination to bephysicists.--- Arthur C. Clarke & Michael Kube-McDowellin The Trigger, 1999, p. 410 (paperback edition)Note: Clarke was a chemist.

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"Every attempt to employ mathematical methods in the study of chemicalquestions must be considered profoundly irrational and contrary to thespirit of chemistry.... if mathematical analysis should ever hold aprominent place in chemistry -- an aberration which is happily almostimpossible -- it would occasion a rapid and widespread degeneration of thatscience." -- Auguste Comte, Cours de philosophie positive, 1830

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BUCKY BALL QUOTATIONS:"If it ain't tubes, we don't do it." -Richard Smalley, ACS Fullerene Satelite-Link Talk "We'd like to make it [bucky fiber] in a continuous fiber, roll it on adrum, and go fishing with it." -Richard Smalley, more of the same...
From: "Brenda L. Carroll" "Chemistry is all about getting lucky..." -Robert Curl

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From: kab4242#NoSpam.utxvms.cc.utexas.edu (Kevin Anthony Boudreaux) It is disconcerting to reflect on the number of students we have flunkedin chemistry for not knowing what we later found to be untrue.--quoted in Robert L. Weber, Science With a Smile (1992)

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From: scutchen#NoSpam.phoenix.phoenix.net (Steve Cutchen) Stephen Wright:(Referring to a glass of water:) I mixed this myself. Two parts H, onepart O. I don't trust anybody! They say we're 98% water. We're that close to drowning...(picks up hisglass of water from the stool)...I like to live on the edge... I bought some powdered water, but I don't know what to add to it.

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From: "Christopher Brown" Chemists are, on the whole, like physicists, only 'less so'.They don't makequite the same wonderful mistakes, and much what they do is an art, relatedto cooking, instead of a true science. They have their moments, and theirsources of legitimate pride. They don't split atoms, as the physicists do.They join them together, and a very praiseworthy activity that is.

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Anthony Standen, Science is a sacred cow (1958).