Inventors

"I must add that Albertine greatly admired at home a large bronze of Barbedienne."

"How often have things been proved to me impossible! Now I am used to it I expect it. But in those days it troubled me. Still I persevered."

"For the moment I was sure that I was in the presence of death. Well, I will tell it frankly, my sentiment was almost entirely that of waiting and expectation. "What is coming next?" I thought. "What am I going to see and know in a few minutes? Whom shall I see after I am dead?" The thought that I should be meeting my father in a few minutes thrilled me. Indeed, I think that in such moments there is no room either for regret or terror. The mind is too full of looking forward. One is frightened only so long as one still has a chance.""

"I don't want to take any merit away from the Wright brothers, for whom I have the greatest admiration; but it is undeniable that, only after us, they presented themselves with an aircraft superior to ours, saying that it was a copy of one they had built before ours". "Soon after the Wright brothers, Levavassor appeared with the "Antoinette" airplane, superior to all that existed at the time; Levavassor had been working for 20 years to solve the problem of flight; he could, therefore, say that his device was a copy of one built many years before. But he didn't." "What would Edison, Graham Bell or Marconi say if, after they had presented in public the electric light bulb, the telephone and the wireless telegraph, another inventor came forward with a better electric light bulb, telephone or wireless telephone apparatus saying that he had built them before them?" "To whom does mankind owe air navigation by the heavier-than-air? To the Wright brothers' experiments, done on the covert (they are themselves saying they did everything possible so that nothing transpired from the results of their experiments) and which were so ignored in the world that we see everyone qualify my 250 meters as a 'memorable minute in the history of aviation,' or is it to Farman, Bleriot and me who did all our demonstrations in front of scientific committees and in full sunlight?"

"Viral hepatitis is an inflammation of the liver caused by at least six different, mostly unrelated, viruses [hepatitis viruses A, B, C, D, E, and G (HAV, HBV, HCV, HDV, HEV, and HGV, respectively)]. It can occur in an acute form from which most patients experience a complete recovery. Acute viral hepatitis is characterized by an insidious onset, often with fever and severe malaise and loss of appetite for food, alcohol, and tobacco. Flu-like symptoms may occur early in the illness. The characteristic finding that occurs in many cases is the development of jaundice, a dramatic yellow discoloration of the skin and other surfaces. Symptoms may last for days or weeks. The acute disease usually results in complete recovery with lifelong immunity. Occasionally, acute hepatitis may advance to the fulminant phase; the patient does not recover, but develops liver failure and death may be rapid. Fortunately, this is rare. Hepatitis due to HAV and HEV is nearly always acute. Acute disease also may occur with HBV and probably HGV. HCV is usually chronic."

"Primary cancer of the liver (hepatocellular carcinoma, HCC) is one of the most common cancers worldwide; HBV is the major cause of HCC. A vaccine that protects against HBV infection was invented in 1969 and is now one of the most commonly used vaccines. National vaccination programs have dramatically reduced the prevalence of HBV infection and carriers, with a concomitant decrease in the incidence of HCC in the vaccine-impacted populations. HBV vaccine is the first widely used cancer prevention vaccine; a second that protects against papilloma virus and cancer of the cervix has recently been introduced."

"In his early years as a physician, Baruch Blumberg developed a keen interest in the genetic polymorphisms and environmental factors that influence disease development. In particular, he was interested in the lipoprotein subtypes that predispose certain individuals to heart disease. As a scientific researcher, Blumberg, while studying these protein fractions, encountered an unusual protein in the serum of Australian aborigine patients with serum hepatitis."

"As a consequence of disease and environmental forces, as well as other factors, a large number of polymorphisms may exist in a population. Some may be related to present selective forces, and others to forces which operated in the past, but which are no longer significant. Present gene frequencies may also result from gene mixture between populations."

"In 1982 Barry visited Taiwan, where the director of the blood bank at a major hospital in Taipei showed him large refrigerators full of blood from people infected with hepatitis B. What should they do with all these contaminated bottles of blood, the director asked? Barry’s answer: they should make hepatitis B vaccine. The Taiwanese hospital adopted his recommendation, which led by 1984 to Taiwan establishing the world’s first program of universal hepatitis B vaccination."

"The salmon may be cited as typically fish-shaped fish."

"On this question of armour it cannot be too strongly insisted that anything less than the thickness necessary definitely to stop the projectile is worse than useless; a "mushroomed" bullet, possibly accompanied by a few detached fragments of steel, is infinitely more disagreeable and dangerous than a bullet which has not been upset."

"Mr. Lanchester seems to be the first man who has considered and mastered the fact and theory of every phase of the subject before sitting down to write."

"That’s not how you deal with the world. Eight people come and do something and you don’t jump on the entire nation."

"We have survived 75 years in a very happy environment where people could live together, leaving aside few fights here and there. We could hold a country together as diverse as India, where people on east look like Chinese, people on West look like Arab, people on North look like white and maybe people on South look like Africans."

"Now what is there to say about 1984? Talk about what you did in the last 5 years. What happened in 1984 happened. But what have you achieved?"

"I don't know what is the threat from China. I think this issue is often blown out of proportion because the US has the habit of defining an enemy."

"I have composed a book on the length of the year in which I show that the tropical year contains 365 days plus a fraction of a day which is not exactly 1/4 days as the mathematicians-astronomers suppose, but which is less than 1/4 by about 1/300."

"I dreamed of a friendly machine to which you could delegate all those manual tasks which are prone to errors. A machine that could quietly learn and perform tasks, that could store simple data and instructions, that could be used by anyone, that would be inexpensive and the size of other office products which people used. I had to create a new language which did not need interpreters in white coats."

"When I say things like "I want to build a machine that can be proud of me," that's not just a joke."

"No honest man needs more than 10 rounds in any gun."

"The best way to address the firepower concern is therefore not to try to outlaw or license many millions of older and perfectly legitimate firearms (which would be a licensing effort of staggering proportions) but to prohibit the possession of high capacity magazines. By a simple, complete and unequivocal ban on large capacity magazines, all the difficulty of defining 'assault rifle' and 'semi-automatic rifles' is eliminated. The large capacity magazine itself, separate or attached to the firearm, becomes the prohibited item. A single amendment to Federal firearms laws could effectively implement these objectives."

"It's disgraceful and embarrassing that the highest technology in a typical inner city high school in this country is the metal detector the students pass through at the front door."

"[Visionaries] not only believed that the impossible can be done, but that it must be done."

"Most products are ugly. The harsh reality is that in many of these markets, form follows funding. And that products go where the market takes them."

"A ‘good 10 percent’ of American products comes out of big-idea organizations that don’t believe in talking to the customer. They’re run by passionate maniacs who make everybody's life miserable until they get what they want."

"Being a successful inventor, starts with being curious, and asking the right questions."

"Trying to assess the true importance and function of the Internet now, is like asking the Wright brothers at Kitty Hawk if they were aware of the potential of American Airlines AAdvantage miles."

"We need to love [children] and help them discover their passions. We need to encourage them to work hard and help them understand that failure is a necessary ingredient for success, as is perseverance."

"The Internet represents the greatest story telling technology since the development of language. It will be far more important than reading and writing as a purposeful tool. Everything that is enabled by story telling will be enabled by the Internet."

"Vibrant companies must put together five-year plans. But they must be willing to change these five-year plans every single year."

"[On the need for ultra high definition television] The problem with television isn't the number of horizontal scanning lines. It's the lines of dialogue spoken by the actors."

"In 250 years, reading and writing will have turned out to be a fad."

"“The Net, I guarantee you, really is fire. I think it’s more important than the invention of movable type.”"

"Art and design are not luxuries, nor somehow incompatible with science and engineering."

"There's no Bits, like Show Bits"

"The technology needed for an early Internet-connection implant is no more than 25 years off. Imagine that you could understand any language, remember every joke, solve any equation, get the latest news, balance your checkbook, communicate with others, and have near-instant access to any book ever published, without ever having to leave the privacy of yourself."

"Technology is stuff that doesn’t work yet."

"Great art isn't about decoration - it's a different language that can both touch our hearts, and open our minds."

"When the first alien spacecraft lands in Washington, I want the little green people to walk first into the National Gallery of Art. I want our art to explain who and what we are before our leaders do."

"I do not pay good wages because I have a lot of money; I have a lot of money because I pay good wages."

"[I]t is not true–no, it is not true–that we have uprooted the Arabs.We have not uprooted them; we have shown them the way to a better life,and we shall continue to do this until they understand that we have a common interest in reviving the Middle East, and that this task can be achieved only on the basis of a strong Jewish Palestine."

"There is no official anti-Semitism in Russia; anti-Semitism in Russia is a crime against the State."

"Equally unfounded is the complaint that the study of science and the technical application of the forces of nature gives to mankind a thoroughly material direction, makes them proud of their knowledge and power, and alienates ideal endeavours. The deeper we penetrate into the harmonious action of natural forces regulated by eternal unalterable laws, and yet so thickly veiled from our complete comprehension, the more we feel on the contrary moved to humble modesty, the smaller appears to us the extent of our knowledge, the more active is our endeavour to draw more from the inexhaustible fountain of knowledge, and understanding, and the higher rises our admiration of the endless wisdom which ordains and penetrates the whole creation."

"A number of great factories in the hands of rich capitalists, in which "slaves of work" drag out their miserable existence, is not, therefore, the goal of the development of the age of natural science, but a return to individual labour, or where the nature of things demands it, the carrying on of common workshops by unions of workmen, who will receive a sound basis only through the general extension of knowledge and civilization, and through the possibility of obtaining cheaper capital."

"Wissenschaftliche Anregung verdanke ich wesentlich dem persönlichen mathematischen Verkehr in Erlangen und in Göttingen. Vor allem bin ich Herrn E. Fischer zu Dank verpflichtet, der mir den entscheidenden Anstoẞ zu der Beschäftigung mit abstrakter Algebra in arithmetischer Auffassung gab, was für all meine späteren Arbeiten bestimmend blieb. I obtained scientific guidance and stimulation mainly through personal mathematical contacts in Erlangen and in Göttingen. Above all I am indebted to Mr. E. Fischer from whom I received the decisive impulse to study abstract algebra from an arithmetical viewpoint, and this remained the governing idea for all my later work."

"My methods are really methods of working and thinking; this is why they have crept in everywhere anonymously."

"Her strength lay in her ability to operate abstractly with concepts. It was not necessary for her to allow herself to be led to new results on the leading strings of known concrete examples. ...[S]he was sometimes but incompletely cognizant of the specific details of the more interesting applications of her general theories. She possessed a most vivid imagination, with the aid of which she could visualize remote connections; she constantly strove toward unification. In this she sought out the essentials in the known facts, brought them into order by means of appropriate general concepts, espied the vantage point from which the whole could best be surveyed, cleansed the object under consideration of superfluous dross, and thereby won through to so simple and distinct a form that the venture into new territory could be undertaken with the greatest prospect of success. ...She possessed a strong drive toward axiomatic purity. All should be accomplished within the frame and with the aid of the intrinsic properties of the structure under investigation; nothing should be brought from without, and only invariant processes should be applied. ...This can be carried too far, however ..."

"During the war, in 1916, Emmy came to Göttingen for good; it was due to Hilbert’s and Klein’s direct influence that she stayed. Hilbert at that time was over head and ears in the general theory of relativity, and for Klein, too... [S]he was able to help them with her invariant theoretic knowledge. For two of the most significant sides of the general relativity theory she gave at that time the genuine and universal mathematical formulation: First, the reduction of the problem of differential invariants to a purely algebraic one by use of "normal coordinates"; second, the identities between the left sides of Euler's equations of a problem of variation which occur when the (multiple) integral is invariant with respect to a group of transformations involving arbitrary functions (identities that contain the conservation theorem of energy and momentum in the case of invariance with respect to arbitrary transformation of the four world coordinates)."

"Emmy Noether herself was... warm like a loaf of bread. There irradiated from her a broad, comforting, vital warmth."

"Emmy Noether's creative power was directed quite generally towards the clarification of mathematical structures and concepts through abstraction, which means leaving all unnecessary entities and properties aside and concentrating on the essentials. Her basic work in this direction can be subsumed under algebra, but her methods eventually penetrated all mathematical fields, including number theory and topology."