Alexander Fleming Quotes

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 valuable antibacterial substances were made by moulds and that I set out to investigate the problem. That would have been untrue and I preferred to tell the truth that penicillin started as a chance observation. My only merit is that I did not neglect the observation and that I pursued the subject as a bacteriologist. My publication in 1929 was the starting-point of the work of others who developed penicillin especially in the chemical field. ~ Alexander Fleming

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

It was astonishing that for some considerable distance around the mould growth the staphococcal colonies were undergoing lysis. What had formerly been a well-grown colony was now a faint shadow of its former self ... I was sufficiently interested to pursue the subject. ~ Alexander Fleming

For the birth of something new, there has to be a happening. Newton saw an apple fall; James Watt watched a kettle boil; Rontgen fogged some photographic plates. And these people knew enough to translate ordinary happenings into something new ... ~ Alexander Fleming

The unprepared mind cannot see the outstretched hand of opportunity. ~ Alexander Fleming

It has been demonstrated that a species of penicillium produces in culture a very powerful antibacterial substance which affects different bacteria in different degrees. Generally speaking it may be said that the least sensitive bacteria are the Gram-negative bacilli, and the most susceptible are the pyogenic cocci ... In addition to its possible use in the treatment of bacterial infections penicillin is certainly useful ... for its power of inhibiting unwanted microbes in bacterial cultures so that penicillin insensitive bacteria can readily be isolated. ~ Alexander Fleming

I doubt that Fleming could have obtained a grant for the discovery of penicillin on that basis [a requirement for highly detailed research plans] because he could not have said, 'I propose to have an accident in a culture so that it will be spoiled by a mould falling on it, and I propose to recognize the possibility of extracting an antibiotic from this mould. ~ Hans Selye

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 break the rules and to be able to find something nobody has thought of. ~ Alexander Fleming

One sometimes finds what one is not looking for ~ Alexander Fleming

Actually, what we really need to remember about Galileo is that most of the people who use his name in argument could barely spell it, let alone tell us what actually happened to the man. His case is used over and over again because critics can't think of any other scientists who were mistreated by the Church. And in this instance they're right. There may have been some people in the scientific world who did not enjoy Church support and were even challenged by Catholicism but, sorry to disappoint, there weren't very many of them. The Church has been the handmaiden of science and scientific discovery, and those who refer to Galileo tend to forget that Louis Pasteur, the inventor of pasteurization, was a devout Catholic, as was Alexander Fleming, who gave us penicillin. Or Father Nicolaus Copernicus, who first proposed the theory of the earth revolving around the sun - this was precisely what Galileo stated, but Copernicus taught it as theory and not fact. Or Monsignor Georges Henri Joseph Édouard Lemaître, a Belgian Roman Catholic priest and professor of physics at the Catholic University of Leuven, who proposed what became known as the Big Bang theory of the origin of the Universe. In the field of acceleration, Fr. Giambattista Riccioli changed the way we understand that particular science; the father of modern Egyptology was Fr. Athanasius Kircher, and the Yugoslavian Fr. Roger Boscovich was the founder of modern atomic theory. ~ Michael Coren

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 enterprise, thought, and perception of an individual. ~ Alexander Fleming

Revolution? You're an idiot. You don't even know what that word means. Forget your precious Mao and Che and Fidel. If they've appeared on a T-shirt, they haven't changed shit. You want revolution, look at Alexander Fleming. Penicillin transformed the world in ways Lenin and Washington only dreamt of. Now sit down and shut up, you autocratic frat boy. It's adult swim. ~ Marcus Sakey

Penicillin cures, but wine makes people happy. ~ Alexander Fleming

Nature makes penicillin; I just found it. ~ Alexander Fleming

In 1928, Scottish scientist Alexander Fleming found that a mysterious antibacterial fungus had grown on a petri dish he'd forgotten to cover in his laboratory: he discovered penicillin by accident. Scientists have sought to harness the power of chance ever since. Modern drug discovery aims to amplify Fleming's serendipitous circumstances a millionfold: pharmaceutical companies search through combinations of molecular compounds at random, hoping to find a hit. ~ Peter Thiel

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

One of my fantasies in my life has been that I was granted access with a camera to go back in time, and to film the actual campaign of Alexander crossing into India through Iran and Persia. ~ Oliver Stone

Alexander and Caesar have had this in common: to be loved and wept by the conquered, and to perish by the hands of their own countrymen. Such men have no country; they belong to the world. ~ Jules Michelet

The Russian people are suffering from economic fatigue and from disillusionment with the Allies! The world thinks the Russian Revolution is at an end. Do not be mistaken. The Russian Revolution is just beginning. ~ Alexander Kerensky

I am dying with the help of too many physicians. ~ Alexander The Great

Medicine's good for some people. Not for me. ~ Shaun Alexander

It is not because the truth is too difficult to see that we make mistakes ... we make mistakes because the easiest and most comfortable course for us is to seek insight where it accords with our emotions - especially selfish ones. - Alexander Solzhenitsyn ~ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

A thug only understands you when you speak his language ~ Alexander Lukashenko

Let the current of your being set towards God, then your life will be filled and calmed by one master-passion which unites and stills the soul. ~ Alexander MacLaren

The wise man believes profoundly in silence, the sign of a perfect equilibrium. Silence is the absolute poise or balance of body, mind, and spirit. The man who preserves his selfhood ever calm and unshaken by the storms of existence - not a leaf, as it were, astir on the tree, not a ripple upon the surface of the shinning pool - his, in the mind of the unlettered sage, is the ideal attitude and conduct of life. Silence is the cornerstone of character. ~ Charles Alexander Eastman

So what is this love that comes with being married?" ... "Being fond of somebody? Being nice? Wanting them not to go away? ... the line struck me with its poetic force. I didn't want you to go away... It was certainly powerful, and perhaps it was as good a definition of love as any other. ~ Alexander McCall Smith

Whether we "spiritualize" our life or "secularize" our religion, whether we invite men to a spiritual banquet or simply join them at the secular one, the real life of the world, for which we are told God gave his only begotten Son, remains hopelessly beyond our religious grasp. ~ Alexander Schmemann

Conversation, to take another example, is one of the common pleasures of life, but not all conversation is pleasurable. The stutterer finds talking painful, and the listener is equally pained. Persons who are inhibited in expressing feeling are not good conversationalists. Nothing is more boring than to listen to a person talk in a monotone without feeling. We enjoy a conversation when there is a communication of feeling. We have pleasure in expressing our feelings, and we respond pleasurably to another person's expression of feeling. The voice, like the body, is a medium through which feeling flows, and when this flow occurs in an easy and rhythmic manner, it is a pleasure both to the speaker and listener. ~ Alexander Lowen

So-called restoration is at least as tricky as brain surgery. Most pictures expire under scalpel and sponge. ~ Alexander Eliot

Our minds can come up with the most entertaining possibilities, if we let them. But most of the time, we keep them under far too close a check. ~ Alexander McCall Smith

I always say that I'm really inspired by mistakes and things that kind of go wrong. ~ Alexander Wang

Many people only go to see other people when they want to ask for some favour. ~ Alexander McCall Smith

Do the thing you love to do. Hank Williams died at the ripe old age of twentynine. Stevie Ray Vaughan at thirty-five. Jesus at thirtythree. Don't think you're special and the Lord's gonna bless you with time. ~ Jill S. Alexander

It is not possible to make great buildings, or great towns, beautiful places, places where you feel yourself, places where you feel alive, except by following this way. And, as you will see, this way will lead anyone who looks for it to buildings which are themselves as ancient in their form, as the trees and hills, and as our faces are. ~ Christopher Alexander

This position will not be disputed, so long as it is admitted that the desire of reward is one of the strongest incentives of human conduct, or that the best security for the fidelity of mankind is to make their interest coincide with their duty. Even the love of fame, the ruling passion of the noblest minds ... would on the contrary deter him from the undertaking, when he foresaw that he must quit the scene before he could accomplish the work ... ~ Alexander Hamilton

We have two lives;
The soul of man is like the rolling world,
One half in day, the other dipt in night;
The one has music and the flying cloud,
The other, silence and the wakeful stars. ~ Alexander Smith

I always make it a rule never to look back. Otherwise, I'd ask myself how I could write such piffle and live with myself, day after day. ~ Ian Fleming

My friend is not perfect-no more than I am-and so we suit each other admirable. ~ Alexander Smith

of the large numbers of people who applied for jobs, and she wondered how employers managed to select from such a wide field. Was everyone interviewed? And even if that happened, how did one distinguish one applicant from another when they all probably had roughly the same qualifications? ~ Alexander McCall Smith

Books are a finer world within the world. ~ Alexander Smith

left side of his mouth kicks up. "I'll have Samuel store your luggage in the boot. ~ Magda Alexander

Whoever you be, O my reader-
friend, foe- I wish with you
to part at present as a pal.
Farewell. Whatever you in my wake
sought in these careless strophes-
tumultuous recollections,
relief from labors,
live pictures or bons mots,
or faults of grammar-
God grant that you,
in this book,
for recreation, for the daydream,
for the heart, for jousts in journals,
may find at least a crumb.
Upon which, let us part, farewell! ~ Alexander Pushkin

I can't stand people who say 'I told you so.' That's worse than somebody coming up and eating your dinner before you have a chance to sit down. ~ Lloyd Alexander

Where did he go!" he bellowed, gloved hands clenching. "I had him in a snare
that would take Alexander the Great a lifetime to untwist, and he did it in a
week!" Al took a step, pinwheeling as his booted heel found an ice cube. ~ Kim Harrison

In a way, being an opera singer is like being a very romantic sixteen-year-old who falls in love with great passion and conviction every month. ~ Renee Fleming

Alexander esteemed it more kingly to govern himself than to conquer his enemies. ~ Plutarch

whimper now, so Matt crosses the courtyard and unties ~ Nick Alexander

Anyone who wishes to learn how to play chess well must make himself or herself thoroughly conversant with the play in positions where the players have castled on opposite sides. ~ Alexander Kotov

He sensed a lonely childhood on some great decaying plantation, an echoing 'Great House' slowly falling into disrepair and being encroached on by the luxuriance of the tropics. The parents dying, and the property being sold. The companionship of a servant or two and an equivocal life in lodgings in the capital. The beauty which was her only asset and the struggle against the shady propositions to be a 'governess', a 'companion', a 'secretary', all of which meant respectable prostitution. Then the dubious, unknown steps into the world of entertainment. The evening stint at the nightclub with the mysterious act which, among people dominated by magic, must have kept many away from her and made her a person to be feared. And then, one evening, the huge man with the grey face sitting at a table by himself. The promise that he would put her on Broadway. The chance of a new life, of an escape from the heat and the dirt and the solitude.

Bond turned brusquely away from the window. A romantic picture, perhaps. But it must have been something like that. ~ Ian Fleming

A lover is never a completely self-reliant person viewing the world through his own eyes, but a hostage to a certain delusion. ~ Alexander Theroux

You're the last line of defense. When you're dead, Hitler will march through Leningrad the way he marched through Paris. Do you remember that?'
'That's not fair. The French didn't fight,' Tatiana said, wanting to be anywhere right now but standing in front of men loading artwork from the Hermitage onto armored trucks.
'They didn't fight, Tania, but you will fight. For every street and for every building. And when you lose
'
'The art will be saved.'
'Yes! The art will be saved,' Alexander said emotionally. 'And another artist will paint a glorious picture, immortalizing you, with a club in your raised hand, swinging to hit the German tank as it's about to crush you, all against the backdrop of the statue of Peter the Great atop his bronze horse. And that picture will hang in the Hermitage, and at the start of the next war the curator will once again stand on the street, crying over his vanishing crates. ~ Paullina Simons

The moment that I realized that I wanted to be a better man for him and that because of him I was a better man than I was before I met him, that was when I realized that I loved him. No flaw that he had, no quirk could ever make me stop loving him and he knows that, so he's free to be himself and he's free to love me and because he loves me I'm free to be myself, knowing that no flaw that I have and no quirk could ever make him stop loving me. ~ Vicktor Alexander

During [Erté]'s childhood St. Petersburg was an elegant centre of theatrical and artistic life. At the same time, under its cultivated sophistication, ominous rumbles could be distinguished. The reign of the tough Alexander III ended in 1894 and his more gentle successor Nicholas was to be the last of the Tsars … St. Petersburg was a very French city. The Franco-Russian Pact of 1892 consolidated military and cultural ties, and later brought Russia into the First World war. Two activities that deeply influenced [Erté], fashion and art, were particularly dominated by France. The brilliant couturier Paul Poiret, for whom Erté was later to work in Paris, visited the city to display his creations. Modern art from abroad, principally French, was beginning to be show in Russia in the early years of the century …

In St. Petersburg there were three Imperial theatres―the Maryinsky, devoted to opera and ballet, the Alexandrinsky, with its lovely classical façade, performing Russian and foreign classical drama, and the Michaelovsky with a French repertoire and company …

It is not surprising that an artistic youth in St. Petersburg in the first decade of this century should have seen his future in the theatre. The theatre, especially opera and ballet, attracted the leading young painters of the day, including Mikhail Vrubel, possibly the greatest Russian painter of the pre-modernistic period. The father of modern theatrical design in Russia was Alexandre Benois, an o ~ Charles Spencer

Talking, telling your truth and sustaining it, even when they refuse to listen to you, or point you out because you do it, may turn you into a martyr, may cause you trouble, but it will always let you know with who you really count and in the end it will benefit others. ... And that is the positive part of the experience, it is the satisfaction that you take with you and that will confirm you that you did well... That is called "leaving traces" and not everyone is capable of doing it! ~ Jasmina Alexander

Time trouble is blunder time. ~ Alexander Kotov