Every aspect of the world today - even politics and international relations - is affected by chemistry.
Linus PaulingRead
I made use of the college library by borrowing books other than scientific books, such as all of the plays by George Bernard Shaw, the writing of Edgar Allan Poe. The college library helped me to develop a broader aspect on life.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the importance of exploring a variety of literature for broader life understanding.
Linus Pauling reflects on his experience in college, highlighting how the breadth of literature he engaged with, beyond just scientific texts, enriched his perspective on life. By borrowing works from renowned playwrights and authors, he gained insights that transcended his primary field of study, suggesting that diverse reading fosters a more rounded worldview.
In practice
During a speech on the importance of literature in education.
Every aspect of the world today - even politics and international relations - is affected by chemistry.
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.
When you work with kids, especially, you want to be ready to turn the camera on at a moment's notice.
Books transmit values. They explore our common humanity. What is the message when some children are not represented in those books?
Like a stool which needs three legs to be stable, mathematics education needs three components: good problems, with many of them being multi-step ones, a lot of technical skill, and then a broader view which contains the abstract nature of mathematics and proofs. One does not get all of these at once, but a good mathematics program has them as goals and makes incremental steps toward them at all levels.
There is only one way to read, which is to browse in libraries and bookshops, picking up books that attract you, reading only those, dropping them when they bore you, skipping the parts that drag-and never, never reading anything because you feel you ought, or because it is part of a trend or a movement. Remember that the book which bores you when you are twenty or thirty will open doors for you when you are forty or fifty-and vise versa. Don’t read a book out of its right time for you.
The knowledge we now consider knowledge proves itself in action. What we now mean by knowledge is information effective in action, information focused on results. Results are outside the person, in society and economy, or in the advancement of knowledge itself. To accomplish anything this knowledge has to be highly specialized.
My purpose... to go on with my heart and soul, devoting all my energies to Girl Scouts, and heart and hand with them, we will make our lives and the lives of the future girls happy, healthy and holy.
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