Every aspect of the world today - even politics and international relations - is affected by chemistry.
Interpretation
Chemistry influences various facets of the modern world, including politics and international relations.
In this quote, Linus Pauling emphasizes the integral role that chemistry plays in shaping contemporary society. He suggests that our understanding of chemical principles can extend beyond mere scientific inquiry, influencing decisions and interactions on a global scale in realms such as politics and diplomacy. This highlights the interconnectedness of scientific knowledge and its impact on societal structures and relationships.
In practice
In a discussion about climate change, one might quote Pauling to emphasize the chemistry behind environmental issues.
Although physicians, as part of their training, are taught that the dosage of a drug that is prescribed for the patient must be very carefully determined and controlled, they seem to have difficulty in remembering that the same principle applies to the vitamins.
I like people. I like animals, too-whales and quail, dinosaurs and dodos. But I like human beings especially, and I am unhappy that the pool of human germ plasm, which determines the nature of the human race, is deteriorating.
Just one living cell in the human body is, more complex than New York City.
The way to get good ideas is to get lots of ideas and throw the bad ones away.
By the proper intakes of vitamins and other nutrients and by following a few other healthful practices from youth or middle age on, you can, I believe, extend your life and years of well-being by twenty-five or even thirty-five years.
You can't have good ideas unless you have lots of ideas.
The main difficulty is finding an idea that really excites me. We live in an age when miracles are no longer miracles, and science and the future are losing their sense of mystery. For science fiction, or at least the type of science fiction I write, this development is almost fatal, but I'm still giving it all I've got.
The first mission to Mars did not expect to find craters and river valleys, and yet they did. The first mission to Jupiter didn't expect to find ocean worlds and volcano worlds, but they did.
The feeling of awed wonder that science can give us is one of the highest experiences of which the human psyche is capable. It is a deep aesthetic passion to rank with the finest that music and poetry can deliver. It is truly one of the things that make life worth living and it does so, if anything, more effectively if it convinces us that the time we have for living is quite finite.
Science and technology revolutionize our lives, but memory, tradition and myth frame our response.
It is always good to know which ideas cannot be checked directly, but it is not necessary to remove them all. It is not true that we can pursue science completely by using only those concepts which are directly subject to experiment.
The opinion prevailed among advanced minds that it was time that belief should be replaced increasingly by knowledge; belief that did not itself rest on knowledge was superstition, and as such had to be opposed.
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