It is the lone worker who makes the first advance in a subject: the details may be worked out by a team, but the prime idea is due to the enterprise,….

One sometimes finds what one is not looking for. When I woke up just after dawn on Sept. 28, 1928, I certainly didn’t plan to revolutionize all medic….

Penicillin sat on a shelf for ten years while I was called a quack..

For the birth of something new, there has to be a happening. Newton saw an apple fall; James Watt watched a kettle boil; Roentgen fogged some photogr….

It was astonishing that for some considerable distance around the mould growth the staphococcal colonies were undergoing lysis. What had formerly bee….

Penicillin cures, but wine makes people happy..

Nature makes penicillin; I just found it..

One sometimes finds what one is not looking for..

If penicillin can cure those that are ill, Spanish sherry can bring the dead back to life..

I play with microbes. There are, of course, many rules to this play...but when you have acquired knowledge and experience it is very pleasant to brea….

(The discovery of penicillin) was a triumph of accident, a fortunate occurrence which happened while I was working on a purely academic bacteriologic….

In my first publication I might have claimed that I had come to the conclusion, as a result of serious study of the literature and deep thought, that….

Suggested remedy for the common cold: A good gulp of whiskey at bedtime-it's not very scientific, but it helps..

It is not difficult to make microbes resistant to penicillin in the laboratory by exposing them to concentrations not sufficient to kill them, and th….

I have been trying to point out that in our lives chance may have an astonishing influence and, if I may offer advice to the young laboratory worker,….

It has been demonstrated that a species of penicillium produces in culture a very powerful antibacterial substance which affects different bacteria i….

The unprepared mind cannot see the outstretched hand of opportunity..