#chemistry

“I am no poet , but if you think for yourselves , as I proceed, the facts will form a poem in your minds . Lecture notes of 1858, quoted in The Life and Letters of Faraday (1870) by Bence Jones, Vol. 2, p. 403”

“I have not been at work except in turning the tables upon table turners”

“Among those points of self”

“If you would cause your view … to be acknowledged by scientific men; you would do a great service to science. If you would even get them to say yes or no to your conclusions it would help to clear the future progress . I believe some hesitate because they do not like their thoughts disturbed. Life and Letters , 2:389.”

“But still try, for who knows what is possible... As quoted in The Life and Letters of Faraday (1870) Vol. II, edited by Henry Bence Jones , p. 483; also engraved above the doorways of the Pfahler Hall of Science at Ursinus College in Collegeville, Pennsylvania (see photo ).”

“On Faraday's Lines of Force”

“Observations on Mental Education”

“I have far more confidence in the one man who works mentally and bodily at a matter than in the six who merely talk about it”

“It is the great beauty of our science , chemistry , that advancement in it, whether in a degree great or small, instead of exhausting the subjects of research, opens the doors to further and more abundant knowledge , overflowing with beauty and utility. Experimental Researches in Electricity , Vol. 2 (1834) p. 257”

“Nothing is too wonderful to be true,”

“How does it happen that you have made so many discoveries? Are you smarter than other scientists ?”

“It seems to me that we have come to the time war ought to be given up. It no longer makes sense to kill 20 million or 40 million people because of a dispute between two nations who are running things, or decisions made by the people who really are running things. It no longer makes sense. Nobody wins. Nobody benefits from destructive war of this sort and there is all of this human suffering.”

“Everyone should know that the " war on cancer " is largely a fraud, and that the National Cancer Institute and American Cancer Society are derelict in their duties to the people who support them.”

“The only sane policy for the world is that of abolishing war . Nobel Lecture for The Nobel Peace Prize 1962 (11 December 1963).”

“The power to destroy the world by the use of nuclear weapons is a power that cannot be used”

“Planck ’s constant and the quantum theory that is built around it are of extreme importance for chemistry”

“We must not have a Nuclear war. We must begin to solve international disputes by the application of man's power of reason in a way that is worthy of the dignity of man. We must solve them by arbitration , negotiation, and the development of international law , the making of international agreements that will do justice to all nations and to all peoples and will benefit all nations and to all people. Now is the time to start. Debating Edward Teller , in The Nuclear Bomb Tests...Is Fallout Overrated? : Fallout and Disarmament KQED”

“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. Nobel Lecture (11 December 1954).”

“Chemical Achievement and Hope for the Future.”

“A substance showing resonance between two or more valence”

“Even though Mendeleev always denied that electrons exist, they later turned out to be vital for ordering the elements in his table. Patricia Fara , Science A Four Thousand Year History (2009).”

“Chemical Discovery and Invention in the Twentieth Century,”

“I suppose when my unknown elements are found, more people will pay us attention.”

“I have no need of proof. The laws of nature, unlike the laws of grammar, admit of no exception.”

“We should still expect to discover many unknown simple bodies; for example, those similar to aluminum and silicon, elements with atomic weights of 65 to 75.”

“I wish to establish some sort of system not guided by chance but by some sort of definite and exact principle .”

“Doctor, you have science, I have faith.”

“To burn oil!.. You can fuel with money as well.”

“In science we must all submit not to what seems to us attractive from one point of view or another, but to what represents an agreement between theory and experiment. Faraday Lecture, the Royal Institution, London (1889) as quoted by Leon Gray, The Basics of the Periodic Table”

“The Periodic Law of the Chemical Elements”

“principle of acidity”

“which supposedly entered into chemical reactions (such as combustion) but had no weight. It was a radical step, therefore, for Lavoisier to base a system of chemistry on a balance of weights and to maintain that chemistry is not concerned with weightless”

“..when they perceive that a body which was before manifest to the senses has escaped and disappeared, they should not admit or liquidate the account before it has been shown to them where the body has gone to and into what it has been received.”

“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. p. 226”

“We must trust to nothing but facts : These are presented to us by Nature, and cannot deceive. We ought, in every instance, to submit our reasoning to the test of experiment, and never to search for truth but by the natural road of experiment and observation. pp. xviii”

“It is a maxim universally admitted in geometry, and indeed in every branch of knowledge, that , in the progress of investigation, we should proceed from known facts to what is unknown. ...In this manner , from a series of sensations, observations, and analyses, a successive train of ideas arises, so linked together, that an attentive observer may trace back to a certain point the order and connection of the whole sum of human knowledge. pp. xv”

“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. p.xiv”

“We think only through the medium of words.”

“Here, then: a revolution [in science and chemistry] has taken place in an important part of human knowledge since your departure from Europe... I will consider this revolution to be well advanced and even completely accomplished if you range yourself with us. ...After having brought you up to date on what is happening in chemistry, it would be well to speak to you about our political revolution. We regard it as done and without any possibility of return to the old order. Letter to Benjamin Franklin (Feb 2, 1790) as quoted by I. Bernard Cohen , Revolution in Science”

“The Chain of Reason versus the Chain of Thumbs”