Biochemists

"Planck’s constant and the quantum theory that is built around it are of extreme importance for chemistry—we may well be justified in saying that quantum theory is of greater importance to chemistry than to physics ... there is no part of chemistry that does not depend, in its fundamental theory, upon quantum principles."

"The power to destroy the world by the use of nuclear weapons is a power that cannot be used - we cannot accept the idea of such monstrous immorality.The time has now come for morality to take its proper place in the conduct of world affairs; the time has now come for the nations of the world to submit to the just regulation of their conduct by international law."

"The only sane policy for the world is that of abolishing war."

"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."

"I've been asked from time to time, "How does it happen that you have made so many discoveries? Are you smarter than other scientists?" And my answer has been that I am sure that I am not smarter than other scientists. I don't have any precise evaluation of my IQ, but to the extent that psychologists have said that my IQ is about 160, I recognize that there are one hundred thousand or more people in the United States that have IQs higher than that. So I have said that I think I think harder, think more than other people do, than other scientists. That is, for years, almost all of my thinking was about science and scientific problems that I was interested in."

"As far as women are concerned, I am old-fashioned enough to like the idea of a woman's managing the household. This is an important activity. A woman does not have to be a bank vice-president to find happiness. I should think routine work like sitting at a desk writing letters, making reports, or punching data into computers would be much less interesting and satisfying than running a home."

"If you want to have good ideas you must have many ideas. Most of them will be wrong, and what you have to learn is which ones to throw away."

"I have always wanted to know as much as possible about the world."

"Only when I began studying chemical engineering at Oregon Agricultural College did I realize that I myself might discover something new about the nature of the world."

"When an old and distinguished person speaks to you, listen to him carefully and with respect — but do not believe him. Never put your trust into anything but your own intellect. Your elder, no matter whether he has gray hair or has lost his hair, no matter whether he is a Nobel laureate — may be wrong. The world progresses, year by year, century by century, as the members of the younger generation find out what was wrong among the things that their elders said. So you must always be skeptical — always think for yourself."

"What astonished me was the very low toxicity of a substance that has such very great physiological power. A little pinch, 5 mg, every day, is enough to keep a person from dying of pellagra, but it is so lacking in toxicity that ten thousand times as much can be taken without harm."

"I have something that I call my Golden Rule. It goes something like this: "Do unto others twenty-five percent better than you expect them to do unto you." … The twenty-five percent is for error."

"Just think of the differences today. A young person gets interested in chemistry and is given a chemical set. But it doesn't contain potassium cyanide. It doesn't even contain copper sulfate or anything else interesting because all the interesting chemicals are considered dangerous substances. Therefore, these budding young chemists don't get a chance to do anything engrossing with their chemistry sets. As I look back, I think it is pretty remarkable that Mr. Ziegler, this friend of the family, would have so easily turned over one-third of an ounce of potassium cyanide to me, an eleven-year-old boy."

"He combined scientific brilliance, political courage, and a stubborn, quirky single-mindedness in ways that... will probably always resist simple explanation."

"Linus Pauling was not always right in his ideas. But my belief is that, in most cases, if somebody is always right in his ideas you find that he does not have much to say. It is an expression of somebody's fertility that he does produce quite a number of ideas, and I think Linus Pauling's score is pretty high... I do not think, as I said earlier, that it is right to discuss the impact of Linus Pauling on molecular biology. Rather, he was one of the founders of molecular biology. It was not that it existed in some way, and he simply made a contribution. He was one of the founders who got the whole discipline going."

"Whatever the context and whatever the audience, he was clear, he was committed, he was compassionate, and, far more often than most, he was right — or if not, at least on the side of the angels."

"If there is a need for a universal hero, it is easy to see why Linus Pauling would be nominated for the role. In many ways he seemed larger than life."

"While still in his twenties, he became a world famous scientist... His work in chemical biology, done during the middle years of his life, was almost equally outstanding... Pauling was also acclaimed for his activism as a citizen, although his activities were controversial."

"He used his scientific credentials to challenge the government's claims that fallout from nuclear testing was not harmful."

"The right wing of the 1950s denounced Pauling as a Communist, or at the least a fellow traveler. Pauling and his wife were, in fact, openly active in several organizations dominated by Soviet sympathizers, as well as dozens of others. But they were never apologists for the Soviet party line, or any other organizational dogma, nor did Pauling refrain from challenging the Soviets when he thought them wrong."

"Then, at the peak of his prestige and renown, instead of settling into a comfortable elder statesman role, Pauling shocked his friends and admirers by launching a crusade to prove that vitamin C would cure the common cold... While Pauling quickly recognized his error on DNA, accept­ing it as the kind of mistake any scientist can make and more or less dis­carding his previous ideas about vitamin treatment of schizophrenia, he never abandoned his claims about vitamin C and the treatment of cancer, and in the last years of his life he felt vindicated when a national medical conference gave him a standing ovation, claiming that "Pauling was right all along.""

"Pauling was not superhuman, but he was a very great man, with an extraordinarily sharp and creative mind, a firm inner determination, and a strong moral sense. His life holds many lessons and poses many intriguing questions for all of us."

"Pauling scooped out a hollow on the narrow ledge and covered himself with a big map he carried in his pocket. He dared not sleep because of the cold. He counted in French and German and Italian to keep himself awake; he exercised as he lay in his narrow quarters. He told the unheeding ocean about the nature of the chemical bond. When the stars came out, he sighted the end of his walking stick and tried to tell time by the constellations. He recited the periodic table of the elements. He grew more and more anxious, not for himself, since he knew he would eventually be found, but for Ava Helen, whom he could not tell that he was uncomfortable, but unharmed. He was chagrined by his predicament…."

"Linus Pauling undoubtedly stands as one of the most influential scientists of the twentieth century."

"Although Pauling was often controversial and was sometimes criticized in both scientific and political arenas, it is incontrovertible that he had a major impact on science, education, and international peace."

"As my father's son I am certainly among his fondest admirers. Now I have ample evidence that all over the nation, and elsewhere in the world, innumerable people share my affection and admiration in their own ways. They not only admire but love him. They have read his books and articles, have seen him on television, have attended meetings where he spoke, or by chance sat next to him at a banquet or on the airplane. A number have received personal messages from him or talked with him over the phone. They feel a personal connection, a strong bond, with his values-his valiant anti-nuclear-testing stance, his dedication to world peace, his emphasis on vitamin C as a valuable nutrient for both preven­tion and treatment of disease, his compassion for the human condition of suffering. For a number of our supporters, Linus Pauling may be the closest embodiment, in this age of uncertainty, amorality, and constant conflict, of a living universal hero."

"From time to time throughout his long life, scientists and commentators dismissed him as a showman. Would that we had a whole troupe of such scientific showmen."

"The esteem with which he was regarded was vividly illustrated to me in 1951 when, as a postdoctoral fellow of Pauling's, I visited Albert Einstein in Princeton. Einstein's comment to me was "Ah, that man is a real genius!""

"An extraordinary person — a scientist, educator, humanist, and statesman with worldwide impact in each of these roles."

"In spite of our advances... there is no scientific evidence that can convince... more potently than a sincere and emotional testimonial. Such... does not always come from the regular guy... Linus Pauling... was said to believe in vitamin C's medicinal properties, himself ingesting massive doses. With his bully pulpit, he contributed to the common belief in vitamin C's curative properties. Many medical studies, unable to replicate Pauling's claims, fell on dear ears as it was difficult to undo the testimonial by a "Nobel Prize winner," even if he was not qualified to discuss matters related to medicine."

"If we stay strong, then I believe we can stabilize the world and have peace based on force. Now, peace based on force is not as good as peace based on agreement, but in the terrible world in which we live, in the world where the Russians have enslaved many millions of human beings, in the world where they have killed men, I think that for the time being the only peace we can have is the peace based on force. Furthermore, I do not think that this peace based on force is, can be, or should be, an ultimate end. Our ultimate end must be precisely what Dr. Pauling says, peace based on agreement, on understanding, on universally agreed and enforced law. I think this is a wonderful idea, but peace based on force buys the necessary time, and in this time we can work for better understanding, for closer collaboration, first with the countries which are closest to us, which we understand better, our allies, the western countries, the NATO countries, which believe in human liberties as we do. Then, as soon as possible, with the rest of the free world, and eventually, I hope, with the whole world, including Russia, even though it may take many years to come."

"I don't want to kill anybody. I am passionately opposed to killing, but I'm even more passionately fond of freedom. The freedom of Dr. Pauling and of myself expressing our opinions freely on any subject, however broad, however far removed of our proper competence, but particularly, to be able to express our opinions in the fields we really know; this would not be possible in Russia."

"... Particularly important were the exact arguments needed to understand how Linus Pauling had discovered the . I soon was taught that Pauling's accomplishment was a product of common sense, not the result of complicated mathematical reasoning. Equations occasionally crept into his argument, but in most cases words would have sufficed. The key to Linus' success was his reliance on the simple laws of . The α-helix had not been found by only staring at X-ray pictures; the essential trick, instead, was to ask which atoms like to sit next to each other. In place of pencil and paper, the main working tools were a set of molecular models superficially resembling the toys of preschool children."

"He sat in his chair, fingers aimlessly drumming, drumming. Somewhere in the Sun, protons were clinging together with just a trifling additional avidity and with each moment that avidity grew and at some moment the delicate balance would break down . . . "And no one on Earth will live to know I was right," cried out Lamont, and blinked and blinked to keep back the tears."

"“It is a mistake,” he said, “to suppose that the public wants the environment protected or their lives saved and that they will be grateful to any idealist who will fight for such ends. What the public wants is their own individual comfort. We know that well enough from our experience in the environmental crisis of the twentieth century.”"

"Don't finish, Pete. I've heard it all before. All I have to do is decipher the thinking of a non-human intelligence." "A better-than-human intelligence. Those creatures from the para-Universe are trying to make themselves understood." "That may be," sighed Bronowski, "but they're trying to do it through my intelligence, which is better than human I sometimes think, but not much. Sometimes, in the dark of the night, I lie awake and wonder if different intelligences can communicate at all; or, if I've had a particularly bad day, whether the phrase 'different intelligences' has meaning at all." "It does," said Lamont savagely, his hands clearly bailing into fists within his lab coat pockets. "It means Hallam and me. It means that fool-hero, Dr. Frederick Hallam and me. We're different intelligences because when I talk to him he doesn't understand. His idiot face gets redder and his eyes bulge and his ears block. I'd say his mind stops functioning, but lack the proof of any other state from which it might stop."

"To Mankind And the hope that the war against folly may someday be won, after all."

""The Last Question" is my personal favorite, the one story I made sure would not be omitted from this collection. Why is it my favorite? For one thing I got the idea all at once and didn't have to fiddle with it; and I wrote it in white-heat and scarcely had to change a word. This sort of thing endears any story to any writer. Then, too, it has had the strangest effect on my readers. Frequently someone writes to ask me if I can give them the name of a story, which they think I may have written, and tell them where to find it. They don't remember the title but when they describe the story it is invariably "The Last Question". This has reached the point where I recently received a long-distance phone call from a desperate man who began, "Dr. Asimov, there's a story I think you wrote, whose title I can't remember—" at which point I interrupted to tell him it was "The Last Question" and when I described the plot it proved to be indeed the story he was after. I left him convinced I could read minds at a distance of a thousand miles. No other story I have written has anything like this effect on my readers — producing at once an unshakeable memory of the plot and an unshakeable forgettery of the title and even author. I think it may be that the story fills them so frighteningly full, that they can retain none of the side-issues."

"How can the net amount of entropy of the universe be massively decreased?"

"Confidence is rewarded, apparently. There was a homewhen proverb that went, "Grip the nettle firmly and it will become a stick with which to beat your enemy.""

"This - this - was my life's work. My past - humanity's future. Foundation. So beatiful. So alive. And nothing can...Dors!"

"Riots! What do I care about riots now? - What do I care about anything now?"

"For ten years the Galactic Empire had been without an Emperor, but there was no indication of that fact in the way the Imperial Palace grounds were operated. Millennia of custom made the absence of an Emperor meaningless."

"Seldon found himself raging at the passage of time."

"There is social and psychological inertia, as well as physical inertia."

"If all human beings understood history, they might cease making the same stupid mistakes over and over."

"You’re naïve Hari. Or not a historian, which is the same thing."

"It is not important what can or cannot be done. What is important is what people will or will not believe can be done."

"“It strikes me that no one could possibly want to be Emperor.” “No sane person would, I agree, but the ‘Imperial wish,’ as it is frequently called, is like a disease that, when caught, drives out sanity. And the closer you get to high office, the more likely you are to catch the disease.”"

"You can always put something noble in a sneering fashion if you try."