Linus Pauling Quotes

It will be possible, through the detailed determination of amino-acid sequences of hemoglobin molecules and of other molecules too, to obtain much information about the course of the evolutionary process, and to illuminate the question of the origin of species. ~ Linus Pauling

Optimum nutrition is the medicine of tomorrow. ~ Linus Pauling

There is no area of the world that should not be investigated by scientists. There will always remain some questions that have not been answered. In general, these are the questions that have not yet been posed. ~ Linus Pauling

Do not let either the medical authorities or the politicians mislead you. Find out what the facts are, and make your own decisions about how to live a happy life and how to work for a better world. ~ Linus Pauling

It would be possible to make much more progress than has been made if the NCI knew its job better, knew how to make discoveries ... The NCI really does not know how to make discoveries ... So long as the NCI is not willing to follow up ideas that seem good to people who have had experience making discoveries, the work of the NCI is going to be pedestrian. ~ Linus Pauling

I recognize that many physicists are smarter than I am-most of them theoretical physicists. A lot of smart people have gone into theoretical physics, therefore the field is extremely competitive. I console myself with the thought that although they may be smarter and may be deeper thinkers than I am, I have broader interests than they have. ~ Linus Pauling

If the structure that serves as a template (the gene or virus molecule) consists of, say, two parts, which are themselves complementary In structure, then each of these parts can serve as the mould for the production of a replica of the other part, and the complex of two complementary parts thus can serve as the mould for the production of duplicates of itself. ~ Linus Pauling

Heisenberg has discussed the coupled double harmonic oscillator, and has shown that the ordinary rules of quantization lead to two non-combining sets of states in one of which the electrons are in phase and out of phase. The energy of the system is successively transferred from one to the other - resonance! ~ Linus Pauling

I have something that I call my Golden Rule. It goes something like this: 'Do unto others twenty-five percent better than you expect them to do unto you.' ... The twenty-five percent is for error. ~ Linus Pauling

Life ... is a relationship between molecules. ~ Linus Pauling

I believe that there is a greater power in the world than the evil power of military force, of nuclear bombs
there is the power of good, of morality, of humanitarianism. ~ Linus Pauling

You have to have a lot of ideas. First, if you want to make discoveries, it's a good thing to have good ideas. And second, you have to have a sort of sixth sense-the result of judgment and experience-which ideas are worth following up. I seem to have the first thing, a lot of ideas, and I also seem to have good judgment as to which are the bad ideas that I should just ignore, and the good ones, that I'd better follow up. ~ Linus Pauling

The nucleic acids, as constituents of living organisms, are comparable In importance to proteins. There is evidence that they are Involved In the processes of cell division and growth, that they participate In the transmission of hereditary characters, and that they are important constituents of viruses. An understanding of the molecular structure of the nucleic acids should be of value In the effort to understand the fundamental phenomena of life. ~ Linus Pauling

I try to identify myself with the atoms ... I ask what I would do If I were a carbon atom or a sodium atom. ~ Linus Pauling

I believe that you can, by taking some simple and inexpensive measures, lead a longer life and extend your years of well-being. My most important recommendation is that you take vitamins every day in optimum amounts to supplement the vitamins that you receive in your food. ~ Linus Pauling

Nations keep agreements, keep their treaties so long as they continue to do them good. ~ Linus Pauling

There is no safe amount of radiation. Even small amounts do harm. ~ Linus Pauling

Just one living cell in the human body is, more complex than New York City. ~ Linus Pauling

An amino acid residue (other than glycine) has no symmetry elements. The general operation of conversion of one residue of a single chain into a second residue equivalent to the first is accordingly a rotation about an axis accompanied by translation along the axis. Hence the only configurations for a chain compatible with our postulate of equivalence of the residues are helical configurations. ~ Linus Pauling

Science is the search for truth. ~ Linus Pauling

Science is the search for truth, that is the effort to understand the world: it involves the rejection of bias, of dogma, of revelation, but not the rejection of morality. ~ Linus Pauling

During the time that Landsteiner gave me an education in the field of immunology, I discovered that he and I were thinking about the serologic problem in very different ways. He would ask, What do these experiments force us to believe about the nature of the world? I would ask, What is the most. simple and general picture of the world that we can formulate that is not ruled by these experiments? I realized that medical and biological investigators were not attacking their problems the same way that theoretical physicists do, the way I had been in the habit of doing. ~ Linus Pauling

I have been especially fortunate for about 50 years in having two memory banks available-whenever I can't remember something I ask my wife, and thus I am able to draw on this auxiliary memory bank. Moreover, there is a second way In which I get ideas ... I listen carefully to what my wife says, and in this way I often get a good idea. I recommend to ... young people ... that you make a permanent acquisition of an auxiliary memory bank that you can become familiar with and draw upon throughout your lives. ~ Linus Pauling

It was obvious-to me at any rate-that the answer was to why an enzyme is able to speed up a chemical reaction by as much as 10 million times. It had to do this by lowering the energy of activation-the energy of forming the activated complex. It could do this by forming strong bonds with the activated complex, but only weak bonds with the reactants or products. ~ Linus Pauling

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. ~ Linus Pauling

[Professor Pauling] confesses that he had harboured the feeling that sooner or later he would be the one to get the DNA structure; and although he was pleased with the double-helix, he 'rather wished the idea had been his'. ~ Linus Pauling

The way to have a good idea is to have a lot of ideas. ~ Linus Pauling

The way to get good ideas is to get lots of ideas, and throw the bad ones away. ~ Linus Pauling

The best way to get a good idea is to have a lot of ideas. ~ Linus Pauling

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. ~ Linus Pauling

So while Pauling struggled with his model, Watson and Crick turned theirs inside out, so the negative phosphorus ions wouldn't touch. This gave them a sort of twisted ladder - the famed double helix. ~ Sam Kean

Science is the search for the truth
it is not a game in which one tries to beat his opponent, to do harm to others. We need to have the spirit of science in international affairs, to make the conduct of international affairs the effort to find the right solution, the just solution of international problems, and not an effort by each nation to get the better of other nations, to do harm to them when it is possible. I believe in morality, in justice, in humanitarianism. ~ Linus Pauling

I think every person should be able to enjoy life. Try to decide what you most enjoy doing, and then look around to see if there is a job for which you could prepare yourself that would enable you to continue having this sort of joy. ~ Linus Pauling

Everyone should know that the 'war on cancer' is largely a fraud. ~ Linus Pauling

Man's great power of thinking, remembering, and communicating are responsible for the evolution of civilization. ~ Linus Pauling

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. ~ Linus Pauling

In my own field, x-ray crystallography, we used to work out the structure of minerals by various dodges which we never bothered to write down, we just used them. Then Linus Pauling came along to the laboratory, saw what we were doing and wrote out what we now call Pauling's Rules. We had all been using Pauling's Rules for about three or four years before Pauling told us what the rules were. ~ J. D. Bernal

Only when I began studying chemical engineering at Oregon Agricultural College did I realize that I myself might discover something new about the nature of the world. ~ Linus Pauling

If you want to have good ideas you must have many ideas. ~ Linus Pauling

Facts are the air of scientists. Without them you can never fly. ~ Linus Pauling

Does the commandment 'Thou Shalt Not Kill' mean nothing to us? Are we to interpret it as meaning 'Thou shalt not kill except on the grand scale,' or 'Thou shalt not kill except when the national leaders say to do so'? ~ Linus Pauling

I think that the formation of [DNA's] structure by Watson and Crick may turn out to be the greatest developments in the field of molecular genetics in recent years. ~ Linus Pauling

Linus Pauling would have us believe and perhaps correctly, that enough vitamin C will have us live another 20 or 30 years, I think the strongest power in the world is not vitamin C but the power of our own thoughts. ~ Frederick Lenz

We may say that life has borrowed from inanimate processes the same mechanism used in producing these striking structures that are crystals. ~ Linus Pauling

The best way to get a good idea is to get a Lot of ideas. - LINUS PAULING ~ Thomas Kelley

The power to destroy the world by the use of nuclear weapons is a power that cannot be used-we cannot accept the idea of such monstrous immmorality. ~ Linus Pauling

I was a subject of ridicule and lectures about the basics of crystallography. The leader of the opposition to my findings was the two-time Nobel Laureate Linus Pauling, the idol of the American Chemical Society and one of the most famous scientists in the world. ~ Dan Shechtman

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. ~ Linus Pauling

I saw [Linus Pauling] as a brilliant lecturer and a man with a fantastic memory, and a great, great showman. I think he was the century's greatest chemist. No doubt about it. ~ Max F. Perutz

She knew for a fact that being left-handed automatically made you special.
Marie Curie, Albert Einstein, Linus Pauling, and Albert Schweitzer were all left-handed. Of course, no believable scientific theory could rest on such a small group of people. When Lindsay probed further, however, more proof emerged. Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, M.C. Escher, Mark Twain, Hans Christian Andersen, Lewis Carrol, H.G. Wells, Eudora Welty, and Jessamyn West- all lefties. The lack of women in her research had initially bothered her until she mentioned it to Allegra. "Chalk that up to male chauvinism," she said. "Lots of left-handed women were geniuses. Janis Joplin was. All it means is that the macho-man researchers didn't bother asking. ~ Jo-Ann Mapson

You can't have good ideas unless you have lots of ideas. ~ Linus Pauling

Dad was a chemistry professor at Saint Olaf College in Minnesota, then Oxford College in Minnesota, and a very active member of the American Chemical Society education committee, where he sat on the committee with Linus Pauling, who had authored a very phenomenally important textbook of chemistry. ~ Peter Agre

The only sane policy for the world is that of abolishing war. ~ Linus Pauling

I realized that more and more I was saying, 'It seems to me that we have come to the time war ought to be given up. It no longer makes sense to kill 20 million or 40 million people because of a dispute between two nations who are running things, or decisions made by the people who really are running things. It no longer makes sense. Nobody wins. Nobody benefits from destructive war of this sort and there is all of this human suffering.' And Einstein was saying the same thing of course. So that is when we decided - my wife and I - that first, I was pretty effective as a speaker. Second, I better start boning up, studying these other fields so that nobody could stand up and say, 'Well, the authorities say such and such '. ~ Linus Pauling

Science is the search for truth - it is not a game in which one tries to beat his opponent, to do harm to others. ~ Linus Pauling

Life is a relationship among molecules and not a property of any molecule. ~ Linus Pauling

When an old and distinguished person speaks to you, listen to him carefully and with respect - but do not believe him. Never put your trust into anything but your own intellect. Your elder, no matter whether he has gray hair or has lost his hair, no matter whether he is a Nobel laureate - may be wrong. The world progresses, year by year, century by century, as the members of the younger generation find out what was wrong among the things that their elders said. So you must always be skeptical - always think for yourself. ~ Linus Pauling

Humanism is a philosophy of joyous service for the greater good of all humanity, of application of new ideas of scientific progress for the benefit of all. ~ Linus Pauling

Every aspect of the world today - even politics and international relations - is affected by chemistry. ~ Linus Pauling

[Instead of collecting stamps, he collected dictionaries and encyclopaedias:] Because you can learn more from them. ~ Linus Pauling

Satisfaction of one's curiosity is one of the greatest sources of happiness in life.
Linus Pauling ~ Linus Pauling

I think Leopard is a much better system [than Windows Vista] ... but OS X in some ways is actually worse than Windows to program for. Their file system is complete and utter crap, which is scary. ~ Linus Torvalds

Whoever came up with "hold the shift key for eight seconds to turn on 'your keyboard is buggered' mode" should be shot. ~ Linus Torvalds

I'm sitting in my home office wearing a bathrobe. The same way I'm not going to start wearing ties, I'm also not going to buy into the fake politeness, the lying, the office politics and backstabbing, the passive aggressiveness, and the buzzwords. ~ Linus Torvalds

I claim that Mach people (and apparently FreeBSD) are incompetent idiots. ~ Linus Torvalds

A computer is like air conditioning - it becomes useless when you open Windows ~ Linus Torvalds

Talk is cheap. Show me the code. ~ Linus Torvalds

Linus might come over. He might not. Either way is fine. Either way, his decision is about himself, not about you. You are not responsible for his feelings. ~ Sophie Kinsella

Charlie Brown, Snoopy, Linus, Lucy ... How can I ever forget them ... ~ Charles M. Schulz

- Fair enough, dit Linus Brandell. ~ David Lagercrantz

I briefly flirted with some of the new age offerings available in the early '90s and found strength in Buddhism, but ultimately I was looking for something that was not tied to tradition. ~ Linus Roache

Quite frankly, even if the choice of C were to do *nothing* but keep the C++ programmers out, that in itself would be a huge reason to use C. ~ Linus Torvalds

How does he do it? Bob in Charge of All Three Kids is an entirely different show
than Sarah in Charge of All Three Kids. With Bob, they're happily willing to be independent little taskmasters, content to leave him in peace until he comes to them with an offer of a new activity. With me, I have all the magnetism of a favorite rock star without the bodyguards. They're on me. A typical example: Linus is under my feet, whining, begging to be picked up, while Lucy hollers, "Mom, I need help!" from another room, while Charlie asks me forty-seven hundred relentless questions about what happens to trash. ~ Lisa Genova

An ugly system is one in which there are special interfaces for everything you want to do. Unix is the opposite. It gives you the building blocks that are sufficient for doing everything. That's what having a clean design is all about. ~ Linus Torvalds

Some people have told me they don't think a fat penguin really embodies the grace of Linux, which just tells me they have never seen an angry penguin charging at them in excess of 100mph. They'd be a lot more careful about what they say if they had. ~ Linus Torvalds

No problem is too big it can't be run away from ~ Linus Torvalds

In many cases, the user interface to a program is the most important part for a commercial company: whether the programs works correctly or not seems to be secondary. ~ Linus Torvalds

More isnt always better, Linus. Sometimes its just more. ~ Julia Ormond

Ven' is the Nain word for 'and.' It was my first word, and so was added to my name at the age of three, when I first spoke it. That is the Nain tradition; each child's first word becomes an official part of his or her name. As a result, three of my brothers are Petar Da-da Polypheme, Osgod No! Polypheme, and Linus Poo-poo Polypheme.

Personally, I think the Nain should rethink this tradition.

As for my name, I think perhaps there should be a question mark after it - 'and?' - as if life is always posing the question of what I am to do next. I was born with more than my share of curiosity, and it gets me into a frightful amount of trouble. I want to know what comes next from the time I wake up in the morning, wondering what the day will hold, till the moment I fall asleep, imagining where my dreams will take me at night. It's like an itch; my skin or scalp hums with excitement whenever my curiosity starts to take over. And? And? And? Scratching it does nothing to help; the itch doesn't go away, and I just look like I have dandruff or fleas. ~ Elizabeth Haydon

There were open source projects and free software before Linux was there. Linux in many ways is one of the more visible and one of the bigger technical projects in this area, and it changed how people looked at it because Linux took both the practical and ideological approach. ~ Linus Torvalds

Once you realize that documentation should be laughed at, peed upon, put on fire, and just ridiculed in general, THEN, and only then, have you reached the level where you can safely read it and try to use it to actually implement a driver. ~ Linus Torvalds

A lot of people still like Solaris, but I'm in active competition with them, and so I hope they die. ~ Linus Torvalds

Linus: It was a short summer, Charlie Brown.
Charlie Brown: And it looks like it's gonna be a looong winter. ~ Charles M. Schulz

I obviously think that freely available software can not only keep up with the evolution of commercial software, but often exceed what you can do commercially. ~ Linus Torvalds

I just love variety. I love being able to do different things. Do period pieces and sci-fi. I love being able to move between genres and be flexible. ~ Linus Roache

Other people have other goals, and sometimes the BSD style licenses are better for those goals. I personally tend to prefer the GPL, but that really doesn't mean that the GPL is any way inherently superior - it depends on what you want the license to do. ~ Linus Torvalds

I am a traveller in both time and space, to be where I have been. ~ Linus Caldwell

When I went to drama school, I thought that everybody would think I was only there because my dad was on TV. ~ Linus Roache

I really am not angry with Linus. Honest. He's not angry with me either. ~ Andrew S. Tanenbaum

One of the reasons that I really don't mind that people are selling Linux commercially is exactly because it does make me feel good that people use the product. ~ Linus Torvalds

She sighed as she set her spade down before turning to look at him.
She was crying.
Linus didn't hesitate as he scooped her up in his arms.
She buried her face in his neck, beard tickling his throat. "I am going to bury you right here," she sobbed. "I'm digging your grave, just so you know."
"I know," he said, rubbing a hand over her back. "I would expect nothing less. ~ T.J. Klune

I personally think of Linux development as being pretty non-localized, and I work with all the people entirely over e-mail - even if they happen to be working in the Portland area. ~ Linus Torvalds

In the end, those who were carried off early no longer need us: they are weaned from earth's sorrows and joys, as gently as children outgrow the soft breasts of their mothers. But we, who do need such great mysteries, we for whom grief is so often the source of our spirit's growth––: could we exist without them? Is the legend meaningless that tells how, in the lament for Linus, the daring first notes of song pierced through the barren numbness; and then in the startled space which a youth as lovely as a god had suddenly left forever, the Void felt for the first time that harmony which now enraptures and comforts and helps us. ~ Rainer Maria Rilke

Charlie Brown: I can't get that Little Red-Haired Girl out of my mind..
Linus: Why don't you call her up, Charlie Brown?
Charlie Brown: I'm afraid she'll hang up in my face!
Linus: That's the beauty of calling her on the phone. One ear isn't a whole face! (28 August 78)
Charlie Brown: Hello? Information? Yes, I'd like to talk to a certain Little Red-Haired Girl... No I already have her number... I was hoping you could tell me something else... What do I do when she answers the phone? (29 August 78) ~ Charles M. Schulz

In trying to understand the Linux phenomenon, then, we have to look not at a single innovator but to a sort of bizarre Trinity : Linus Torvalds, Richard Stallman, and Bill Gates. Take away any of these three and Linux would not exist. ~ Neal Stephenson

Trying to act cold is a challenge when your makeup's running and sweat is pouring down your neck. ~ Linus Roache