Sam Kean Quotes

9 quotes in 255 categories

• In these days before antiseptics, doctors themselves also suffered high mortality rates. Florence Nightingale, a nurse during the Crimean War (1853-1856), watched one particularly inept…
• Lithium tweaks many mood-altering chemicals in the brain, and its effects are complicated. Most interesting, lithium seems to reset the body’s circadian rhythm, its inner…
• Never underestimate spite as a motivator for genius.
• So if big enough droplets fell far enough fast enough, someone floating right near the metallic hydrogen layer inside Jupiter maybe, just maybe, could have…
• Mendeleev, unlike the squeamish Meyer, had balls enough to predict that new elements would be dug up. Look harder, you chemists and geologists, he seemed…
• If anything runs deeper than a mathematician’s love of variables, it’s a scientist’s love of constants.
• Art, in other words, betrays a sexy mental fitness.
• Because our lungs regularly deal with carbon dioxide, they see nothing wrong with absorbing its cousin, SiO2, which can be fatal. Many dinosaurs might have…
• Iron is the final peal of a star’s natural life.

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