All Atoms Are Quotes & Sayings

The laws of economics tell us that atoms are expensive if they're rare, and the laws of physics tell us that they're rare if they require unusually high temperatures to make. Putting this together tells us that if atoms could talk, the priciest ones would tell the best stories. Garden-variety atoms such as carbon, nitrogen and oxygen (which together with hydrogen make up 96% of your body weight) are so cheap because garden-variety stars such as our Sun can produce them in their death throes, after which they can form new solar systems in a cosmic recycling event. Gold, on the other hand, is produced when a star dies in a supernova explosion so violent and rare that it, during a fraction of a second, releases about as much energy as all the other stars in our observable Universe combined. No wonder making gold eluded the alchemists. — Max Tegmark

The idea of being able to build things bottom up, atom by atom, has made [scientists] all into tinkerers. And all of a sudden scientists are seeking designers, just like designers are seeking scientists. — Paola Antonelli

It is unreasonable to expect science to produce a system of ethics-ethics are a kind of highway code for traffic among mankind-and the fact that in physics atoms which were yesterday assumed to be square are now assumed to be round is exploited with unjustified tendentiousness by all who are hungry for faith; so long as physics extends our dominion over nature, these changes ought to be a matter of complete indifference to you. — Sigmund Freud

The most remarkable discovery in all of astronomy is that the stars are made of atoms of the same kind as those on the earth. — Richard P. Feynman

I love individuals. I think people are terrific as I meet and get to know them. I like imagination. I like the freedom that this society manages to parcel out to us in the midst of the rest of what they do to you. I also like thinking about the fact that the atoms in me are the same atoms that are in all the rest of the universe, and that every one of those atoms came from the middle of a star. In other words, it's only me out there. — George Carlin

Everything is composed of small particles of itself and they are flying around in concentric circles and arcs and segments and innumerable other geometrical figures too numerous to mention collectively, never standing still or resting but spinning away and darting hither and thither and back again, all the time on the go. These diminutive gentlemen are called atoms. Do you follow me intelligently? — Flann O'Brien

The world can accommodate your situation, as it accommodates all situations. And your body will keep explaining to you how it all works, this original experiment, this lifelong gift. Your body will keep describing how, for the first time being at least, there is no escape from this particular vessel. These are your atoms. This is your consciousness. These are your experiences
your successes and mistakes. This is your first and final chance, your one and only biography. This is the existential container, the bowl of your life's soup, wherein something can be made sense of, wherein there is a cure, wherein you are. — Sarah Hall

The whole universe is a complex of rhythms," mused Amanda. "We each of us feel a need to identify our bodily rhythms with those of the cosmos. The sea is the grand agency of rhythm. The grain-tops in the wind, the atoms that orbit are rhythmic. The uterus, which is a strong muscular organ, contracts with the birth of a baby - the rhythmic contractions, in fact, are the important motivations for the baby to emerge into the world. Rhythm is how it all begins. — Tom Robbins

Thus will the fondest dream of Phallic science be realized: a pristine new planet populated entirely by little boy clones of great scientific entrepreneurs free to smash atoms, accelerate particles, or, if they are so moved, build pyramids
without any social relevance or human responsibility at all. — Barbara Ehrenreich

Isn't it true that whatever isn't determined by our genes must be determined by our environment? What else is there? There's Nature and there's Nurture. Is there also some X, some further contributor to what we are? There's Chance. Luck. This extra ingredient is important but doesn't have to come from the quantum bowels of our atoms or from some distant star. It is all around us in the causeless coin-flipping of our noisy world, automatically filling in the gaps of specification left unfixed by our genes, and unfixed by salient causes in our environment. — Daniel Dennett

Every atom in your body came from a star that exploded. And, the atoms in your left hand probably came from a different star than your right hand. It really is the most poetic thing I know about physics: You are all stardust. You couldn't be here if stars hadn't exploded, because the elements - the carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, iron, all the things that matter for evolution and for life - weren't created at the beginning of time. They were created in the nuclear furnaces of stars, and the only way for them to get into your body is if those stars were kind enough to explode. So, forget Jesus. The stars died so that you could be here today. — Lawrence M. Krauss

Atoms are a relationship of energy. You are a relationship of energy interacting with another person who is another complex relationship of energy. We all exchange more than words with each other ... We are made of the same substance as rocks and stars.. We are an exotic cocktail living on this planet.. We live in this universe which is a self-transcending reality — Rob Bell

If the solar system was brought about by an accidental collision, then the appearance of organic life on this planet was also an accident, and the whole evolution of Man was an accident too. If so, then all our present thoughts are mere accidents
the
accidental by-product of the movement of atoms. And this holds for the thoughts of the materialists and astronomers as well as for anyone else's. But if their thoughts
i.e. of materialism and astronomy
are merely accidental by-products, why should we believe them to be true? I see no reason for believing that one accident should be able to give me a correct account of all the other accidents. It's like expecting that the accidental shape taken by the splash when you upset a milkjug should give you a correct account of how the jug was made and why it was upset. — C.S. Lewis

forming the "hydrogen bond"... is dynamic, with the exchange occurring in a few billionths of a billionth of a second. Since water molecules can "lose" two hydrogen atoms and "win" two by way of their oxygen atom, they are on average regrouped in fours, and the network of water, whether in our glass or in our cells is tetrahedral. All the same, this arrangement is not perfect in liquid water (otherwise the water would be a solid crystal), and locally there are many defects in the network. Although the motif of four water molecules is the most common in "linear" hydrogen bonds, the water molecule sometimes has a "forked tongue" with bifurcated liaisons, which creates arrangements of three or five, or even two or six molecules. This variability prevents water from being structured over a great distance and enables it to remain in a liquid state at the ambient temperature. — Denis Le Bihan

I squeeze his hand to let him know that I get it, that I share his pain. That's the moment when I think I finally understand what my science teachers tried to explain when they talked about thermal energy. My atoms are in motion making a path from my fingertips where I connect with him, spreading to my whole body and getting me hotter by the second. All my molecules seem to be moving and vibrating on their own accord, faster and faster and making my hand feels tingly. Whenever I'm around him I always have this warmth that surrounds me. When I get all flustered because he is making me all hot and bothered without even meaning to, the heat starts to resemble a fever. Now, it's like a volcano erupted all over me. It's passion and love and suffering all smashed together and linked between our hands. A little ball of emotions that keeps expanding. — Tammy Faith

During the 20th century, we came to understand that the essence of all substances - their colour, texture, hardness and so forth - is set by their structure, on scales far smaller even than a microscope can see. Everything on Earth is made of atoms, which are, especially in living things, combined together in intricate molecular assemblages. — Martin Rees

You can rescue someone from danger, but not from change and death; the soldier who survives the battle becomes someone else, something else, somewhere else. His war subsides; his memory fades; his nation ceases to exist; all but the elemental structures decay away; the very atoms that were once warring sides are now soil, trees, lovers, birds; all the medals are playthings for strangers; the cannons have been melted down and turned back into church bells that will become cannons again for another war. — Rebecca Solnit

The adult Feynman asked: If all scientific knowledge were lost in a cataclysm, what single statement would preserve the most information for the next generations of creatures? How could we best pass on our understanding of the world? He proposed, "All things are made of atoms - little particles that move around in perpetual motion, attracting each other when they are a little distance apart, but repelling upon being squeezed into one another," and he added, "In that one sentence, you will see, there is an enormous amount of information about the world, if just a little imagination and thinking are applied. — Anonymous

We live and die, but we are made of immortal stuff. The carbon atoms in our fingernails, the calcium atoms in our bones, the iron atoms in our blood - all of the countless trillions of atoms of which we are made - are ancient objects. They existed before us, before the Earth itself, in fact. And after each of us dies, they will depart from our bodies and do other things. Forever. — Keith Heyer Meldahl

Because when this universe was born, when it blasted into existence in fire and glory, everything that would ever exist was created. Our souls are made of that fire and glory, of the atoms of it, the fragments of stars. Everyone's are, but I believe ours, yours and mine, are made from the dust of the same star. That's why we've always been drawn to each other like magnets, all our lives. All the pieces of us belong together." He — Cassandra Clare

All things are made of atoms - little particles that move around in perpetual motion, attracting each other when they are a little distance apart, but repelling upon being squeezed into one another. In — Richard Feynman

The books remind us that way down deep in our hearts, part of us knows that we are creatures of light and we cannot be touched or destroyed by anything made out of atoms or destroyed at all - that light is indestructible. And we may reflect that and express that in multiple trillions of discrete ways, but nevertheless, that indestructible sense of joyful capacity to express life and express love is always there. — Richard Bach

But a man's relationship to the world is determined not just by his intellect but by his feelings and by his who aggregate of spiritual forces. However much one implies or explains to a person that all that truly exists is no more than an idea, or that everything is made up of atoms, or that the essence of life is substance or will, or that heat, light, movement and electricity are only manifestations of one and the same energy; however much you explain this to a man - a being who feels, suffers, rejoices, fears and hopes - it will not explain his place in the universe. — Leo Tolstoy

We're never quite so powerful as we feel, in this free state," she whispered in the rushing wind. "Because our usual bodies are left behind, and our moving mind complexes can draw only upon the chance energies that they happen to grasp from the atoms of the air or other substances we possess, by the linkage of probability. All our power lies in that control of probability, and we must strike where it will serve. — Jack Williamson

No death, no death,' he muttered; 'there is that which never dies-- which abides. It is but the individual that perishes, the whole remains. It is the organism that vanishes, the atoms are there. It is but hte man that dies, the Universal Whole of which he is part reworks him into its inmost self. Ah! What matters that man's day be short?-- that the sunrise sees him, and the sunset sees his grave; that of which he is but the breath has breathed him forth and drawn him back again. That abides-- we abide... Let us die, beloved, you and I, that we may pass on for ever through the Universal Life!' In that deep world of contemplation all fierce desires die out, and peace comes down. He, Waldo, as he walked there, saw no more the world that was about him; cried out no more for the thing that he had lost. — Olive Schreiner

The separate atoms of a molecule are not connected all with all, or all with one, but, on the contrary, each one is connected only with one or with a few neighbouring atoms, just as in a chain link is connected with link. — August Kekule

I acknowledge the challenge of believing in a supernatural divinity. After all, in the natural a rock is a rock; a desk is a desk; my skin is my skin. Or are they? That rock you pick up and feel on your skin and place on the desk is 99.9% empty space - between atoms; as is your skin and the desk. So, perhaps it is our perception of the natural or "real" world that needs tweaking, not the supernatural. — Charles F. Glassman

It turns out all molecular and biological systems have speeds of the atoms move inside them; the fastest possible speeds are determined by their molecular vibrations, and this speed is about a kilometre per second. — Ahmed Zewail

Although there is nothing so bad for conscience as trifling, there is nothing so good for conscience as trifles. Its certain discipline and development are related to the smallest things. Conscience, like gravitation, takes hold of atoms. Nothing is morally indifferent. Conscience must reign in manners as well as morals, in amusements as well as work. He only who is "faithful in that which is least" is dependable in all the world. — Maltbie Davenport Babcock

If now and then we encounter pages that explode, pages that wound and sear, that wring groans and tears and curses, know that they come from a man with his back up, a man whose only defenses left are his words and his words are always stronger than the lying, crushing weight of the world, stronger than all the racks and wheels which the cowardly invent to crush out the miracle of personality. If any man ever dared to translate all that is in his heart, to put down what is really his experience, what is truly his truth, I think then the world would go to smash, that it would be blown to smithereens and no god, no accident, no will could ever again assemble the pieces, the atoms, the indestructible elements that have gone to make up the world. — Henry Miller

They say (she had read somewhere) that no one ever disappears, up in the atmosphere, stratosphere, whatever you call space
atoms infinitely minute, beyond conception of existence, are up there forever, from the whole world, from all time. — Nadine Gordimer

His eyes were more intense, the gaze more intimate. He put just the last inch or so of the fingers of both hands on the table to either side of his plate and said, Love makes them run. That is not my lineage, my idea. That is a fact just like when water gets cold it ices. Like that. Some people cannot see this is a fact, but this is. They are blind in different ways but this is a fact: Love makes the atoms go where they go and stick where they stick. Everybody when they see a baby, a small boy or girl, they smile? Why? Because inside themself they know this fact. They know love made this baby, this boy, this girl. They feel this natural rising up of love in themself. Okay, yes? Before, I said to you about God's music that is playing all the time, for everyone. God's music is this love. And this love that runs our world, sometimes it means that there is help coming from that love, from that ... source you would — Roland Merullo

Teenagers are like atoms when they're moving at hundreds of miles an hour and bouncing off each other. Everybody's got such a crazy hormonal drive and reacting to each other differently and getting upset over little things. High school puts all these potential explosions in one place. — Anton Yelchin

The atoms of our bodies are traceable to stars that manufactured them in their cores and exploded these enriched ingredients across our galaxy, billions of years ago. For this reason, we are biologically connected to every other living thing in the world. We are chemically connected to all molecules on Earth. And we are atomically connected to all atoms in the universe. We are not figuratively, but literally stardust. — Neil DeGrasse Tyson

For not all atoms are wiggle-away; xenon, for example, is heavy and slow. It would make a nicely combustibel atmosphere, of glowing lavender hue, and would make sound possible, albeit slow, so everyone's voice would drop several octaves and everyone would sound like walruses. And xenon is an anesthetic, so inhabitants would be blithe and amenable to dentistry. — Amy Leach

Alone, and start to think. There are the rushing waves ... mountains of molecules, each stupidly minding its own business ... trillions apart ... yet forming white surf in unison. Ages on ages ... before any eyes could see ... year after year ... thunderously pounding the shore as now. For whom, for what? ... on a dead planet, with no life to entertain. Never at rest ... tortured by energy ... wasted prodigiously by the sun ... poured into space. A mite makes the sea roar. Deep in the sea, all molecules repeat the patterns of one another till complex new ones are formed. They make others like themselves ... and a new dance starts. Growing in size and complexity ... living things, masses of atoms, DNA, protein ... dancing a pattern ever more intricate. Out of the cradle onto the dry land ... here it is standing ... atoms with consciousness ... matter with curiosity. Stands at the sea ... wonders at wondering ... I ... a universe — Richard Feynman

The discovery of radioactivity created a momentary chaos in chemistry and physics; but it soon led to a fuller interpretation of the old ideas. It dispersed many difficulties, harmonized many discords, and yea, more! It shewed the substance of Universe as a simplicity of Light and Life, manners to compose atoms, themselves capable of deeper self-realization through fresh complexities and organizations, each with its own peculiar powers and pleasures, each pursuing its path through the world where all things are possible. — Aleister Crowley

One's own free unfettered choice, one's own caprice, however wild it may be, one's own fancy worked up at times to frenzy
is that very "most advantageous advantage" which we have overlooked, which comes under no classification and against which all systems and theories are continually being shattered to atoms. And how do these wiseacres know that man wants a normal, a virtuous choice? What has made them conceive that man must want a rationally advantageous choice? What man wants is simply independent choice, whatever that independence may cost and wherever it may lead. And choice, of course, the devil only knows what choice. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

This is the awe-inspiring universe of magic: There are no atoms, only waves and motions all around. Here, you discard all belief in barriers to understanding. You put aside understanding itself. This universe cannot be seen, cannot be heard, cannot be detected in any way by fixed perceptions. It is the ultimate void where no preordained screens occur upon which forms may be projected. You have only one awareness here - the screen of the magi: Imagination! Here, you learn what it is to be human. You are a creator of order, of beautiful shapes and systems, an organizer of chaos. — Frank Herbert

I do not think science has to make any apologies. It looks at the world and tells it like it is. And we all live longer, better lives because of this dispassionate view. Sure, it commands awe and provides inspiration. Still, I would rather be operated on by a surgeon who sees me as an assemblage of atoms than one who lovingly tries to manipulate what he or she imagines are my vital energy fields. — Victor J. Stenger

We all walk in a land of dreams. For what are we but atoms and hope, a handful of stardust and sinew? We are weary travelers trying to find our way home on a road that never ends. Am I a part of your dream? or are you but a part of mine? — Libba Bray

Crystals remind us of the structures upon which our universe is built. All matter, everything that is physical and solid, owes its existence to the organizing properties of crystals. Crystals are structures that are formed from a regular repeated pattern of connected atoms or molecules. — H.D. Anyone

If to a poet a physicist may speak
Freely, as though we shared a common tongue,
For "peace in our time" I should hardly seek
By means that once proved wrong.
It seems the Muscovite
Has quite a healthy, growing appetite.
We can't be safe; at least we can be right.
Some bombs may help - perhaps a bomb-proof cellar,
But surely not the Chamberlain umbrella.
The atom is now big; the world is small.
Unfortunately, we have conquered space.
If war does come, it comes to all,
To every distant place.
Will people have the dash
That Britons had when their world seemed to crash
Before a small man with a small mustache?
You rhyme the atoms to amuse and charm us -
Your counsel should inspire, and not disarm us.

(Teller's reply to an anonymous British man's poem/message (that Americans are too belligerent), both in the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists). — Edward Teller

The radical novelty of modern science lies precisely in the rejection of the belief, which is at the heart of all popular religion, that the forces which move the stars and atoms are contingent upon the preferences of the human heart. — Richard Adams

One of the most poetic facts I know about the universe is that essentially every atom in your body was once inside a star that exploded. Moreover, the atoms in your left hand probably came from a different star than did those in your right. We are all, literally, star children, and our bodies made of stardust. — Lawrence M. Krauss

As your prospective of the world increases, not only is the pain it inflicts on you less but also its meaning. Understanding the world requires you to take a certain distance from it. Things that are too small to see with the naked eye, such as molecules or atoms, we magnify. Things that are too large such as cloud formations, river deltas, cloud formations, constellations, we reduce. At length we bring within the scope of our senses and we stabilize it with fixer. When it has been fixed we call it knowledge. Throughout our childhood and teenage years, we strive to attain to objects and phenomena. We read, we learn, we experience, we make adjustments. Then one day we reach the point where all necessary distances have been set, all the necessary systems have been put in place. That is when time begins to pick up speed — Karl Ove Knausgard

All the physical and chemical laws that are known to play an important part in the life of organisms are of this statistical kind; any other kind of lawfulness and orderliness that one might think of is being perpetually disturbed and made inoperative by the unceasing heat motion of the atoms. — Erwin Schrodinger

Natural causes, as we know, are at work, which tend to modify, if they do not at length destroy, all the arrangements and dimensions of the earth and the whole solar system. But though in the course of ages catastrophes have occurred and may yet occur in the heavens, though ancient systems may be dissolved and new systems evolved out of their ruins, the molecules [i.e. atoms] out of which these systems are built-the foundation stones of the material universe-remain unbroken and unworn. They continue to this day as they were created-perfect in number and measure and weight. — James Clerk Maxwell

Of course I'm a fake. We're all fakes on this whole world, pretending to be something we're not. We are not just bodies walking around, not just atoms, molecules. We are unkillable, undestroyable ideas of the IS, no matter how much we believe otherwise. — Richard Bach

But getting back to my old friend water, the thing of it is this: No matter how hot or how cold, no matter its state, its form, its qualities, or its color, each molecule of water still consists of no more than a single oxygen atom bonded to two sister atoms of hydrogen. It takes all three of them to make a blinding blizzard - or a thunderstorm, for that matter ... or a puffy white cloud in a summer sky. O Lord, how manifold are thy works! — Alan Bradley

(If God wills it) ... the number of angels ... may be infinite ... Blessed are they that have not seen and yet have believed. Once upon a time, atoms did not exist. There was no Dalton, no Rutherford. Albert Einstein was nothing more than a theorist, but you only have to look at Hiroshima and Nagasaki to know that things invisible exist and bear great power. The power to destroy. Or the power to create ... Atoms and angels, reason and faith ... One without the other is less than half as strong and can be a danger to our vitality. Reason is subject to the tests of logic and observable, demonstrable phenomena. Faith is tested by our desire and will. One cannot see faith, just as one cannot pour out hope or love from a beaker. Self-sacrifice and devotion escape the strongest microscope, but such qualities of spirit can be shown and known by us all ... And so with God's messengers, more believed than seen, more felt than touched, our angel's exist in open hearts, if we have but faith. — Keith Donohue

The chemists who uphold dualism are far from being agreed among themselves; nevertheless, all of them in maintaining their opinion, rely upon the phenomena of chemical reactions. For a long time the uncertainty of this method has been pointed out: it has been shown repeatedly, that the atoms put into movement during a reaction take at that time a new arrangement, and that it is impossible to deduce the old arrangement from the new one. It is as if, in the middle of a game of chess, after the disarrangement of all the pieces, one of the players should wish, from the inspection of the new place occupied by each piece, to determine that which it originally occupied. — Auguste Laurent

A Pleasant Theology One reason why many people find Creative Evolution so attractive is that it gives one much of the emotional comfort of believing in God and none of the less pleasant consequences. When you are feeling fit and the sun is shining and you do not want to believe that the whole universe is a mere mechanical dance of atoms, it is nice to be able to think of this great mysterious Force rolling on through the centuries and carrying you on its crest. If, on the other hand, you want to do something rather shabby, the Life-Force, being only a blind force, with no morals and no mind, will never interfere with you like that troublesome God we learned about when we were children. The Life-Force is a sort of tame God. You can switch it on when you want, but it will not bother you. All the thrills of religion and none of the cost. Is the Life-Force the greatest achievement of wishful thinking the world has yet seen? - from Mere Christianity — C.S. Lewis

Either all things proceed from one intelligent source and come together as in one body, and the part ought not to find fault with what is done for the benefit of the whole; or there are only atoms, and nothing else than a mixture and dispersion. Why, then, art thou disturbed? Say to this ruling faculty, Art thou dead, art thou corrupted, art thou playing the hypocrite, art thou become a beast, dost thou herd and feed with the rest? — Marcus Aurelius

The atoms all seem to be made from the same general constitution. They have a nucleus, and around the nucleus there are electrons. — Anonymous

The product of causes ... his origin, his growth, his hopes and fears, his loves and his beliefs, are but the outcome of accidental collocations of atoms, that no fire, no heroism, no intensity of thought and feeling, can preserve an individual life beyond the grave; that all the labors of the ages, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius are destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system, that the whole temple of man's achievement must inevitably be buried beneath the debris of a universe in ruins - all these things, if not quite beyond dispute, are so nearly certain, that no philosophy which rejects them can hope to stand ... — Bertrand Russell

The mind of man has perplexed itself with many hard questions. Is space infinite, and in what sense? Is the material world infinite in extent, and are all places within that extent equally full of matter? Do atoms exist or is matter infinitely divisible? — James C. Maxwell

Over the years, humans have managed to incorporate nearly every element, light and weighty, common and obscure, into our daily lives. And given how small atoms are and how many of them there are all around us, it's almost certain that your body has at least brushed against an atom of every single natural element on the periodic table. — Sam Kean

It may be that there is no God, that the existence of all that is beautiful and in any sense good is but the accidental and ineffective byproduct of blindly swirling atoms, that we are alone in a world that cares nothing for us or for the values that we create and sustain - that we and they are here for a moment only, and gone, and that eventually there will be left no trace of us in the universe. A man may well believe that this dredful thing is true. But only the fool will say in his heart that he is glad that it is true. — Sterling M. McMurrin

There are millions and billions of atoms of memory of all kinds of musical themes in me. — Erykah Badu

Coquettes are, but too rare. It is a career that requires great abilities, infinite pains, a gay and airy spirit. 'T is the coquette who provides all the amusements,
suggests the riding-party, plans the picnic, gives and guesses charades, acts them. She is the stirring element amid the heavy congeries of social atoms,
the soul of the house, the salt of the banquet. — Benjamin Disraeli

Since the atoms are indestructible, the disintegration of human body after death should be actually considered as the dispersion of the separate filaments (except probably those forming the bones) in all different directions. — George Gamow

Look at any randomly selected piece of your world. Encoded deep in the biology of every cell in every blade of grass, in every insect's wing, in every bacterium cell, is the history of the third planet from the Sun in a Solar System making its way lethargically around a galaxy called the Milky Way. Its shape, form, function, colour, smell, taste, molecular structure, arrangement of atoms, sequence of bases, and possibilities for the future are all absolutely unique. There is nowhere else in the observable Universe where you will see precisely that little clump of emergent, living complexity. It is wonderful. — Brian Cox

You know what's truly weird about any financial crisis? We made it up. Currency, money, finance, they're all social inventions. When the sun comes up in the morning it's shining on the same physical landscape, all the atoms are in place. — Bruce Sterling

There's atoms, which is things that is too small to see, that's what we're all made of. And there's things that are smaller than atoms, and that's Particle Physics.
Bod nodded and decided that Scarlett's father was probably interested in imaginary things. — Neil Gaiman

'By convention there is color, by convention sweetness, by convention bitterness, but in reality there are atoms and the void,' announced Democritus. The universe consists only of atoms and the void; all else is opinion and illusion. If the soul exists, it also consists of atoms. — Edward Robert Harrison

Gods, like humans," he said, "are order imposed on chaos. With humans, the imposition is easy to see. Millions of cells, long twisted chains of atoms, so much bone and blood and juice, every piece performing its function. When one of those numberless pumps refuses to beat, when one of those infinitesimal pipes gets blocked, all the pent-up chaos springs forward like a bent sword, and the soul is lost to the physical world unless something catches it first. — Max Gladstone

One of the things I admire so much about Atom Egoyan is that again and again he makes movies about the human condition, who we are, what we want, how we communicate to one another and this is also an exploration of a long-term relationship and what happens in it. There's human sexuality and all those kinds of things, so that helps - it all helps. You realise that I'm not a Playboy bunny. — Julianne Moore

In some sense, what you might have suspected from the first day of high-school chemistry is true: The periodic table is a colossal waste of time. Nine out of every 10 atoms in the universe are hydrogen, the first element and the major constituent of stars. The other 10 percent of all atoms are helium. — Sam Kean

Molecules form and dissolve, returning to the primordial soup of atoms. But consciousness survives the death of the molecules on which it rides. What was once a bundle of energy in a sunbeam turns into a leaf, only to fall and change again into soil. The change of state crosses many boundaries. A sunbeam is invisible, whereas leaves and soil are visible.A leaf is alive and growing,whereas sunbeams aren't.the colors of light, leaf, and soil are different, and so on.
But all these transformations exist as constructs of the mind.The actual energy present in the sunbeam experiences no change at all. — Deepak Chopra

Except for hydrogen, all the atoms that make each of us up - the iron in our blood, the calcium in our bones, the carbon in our brains - were manufactured in red giant stars thousands of light-years away in space and billions of years ago in time. We are, as I like to say, starstuff. — Carl Sagan

Now from science we have a new creation story, which is very alluring and very exciting. It's not about deposing all the other wisdom stories about creation that humanity has gathered, but it certainly supplements it. It offers a real universal view because it's beyond any particular religion, ethnicity, nation and so forth. As we're struggling as a species to come together as a tribe, it provides us our basic framework, because it's from creation stories that ethics derive. Today's creation story from science is that we come from 14 billion years of an organic unfolding of the universe and are connected physiologically with every being in the universe. We all share the same atoms and the same molecules. That's truly significant and important at this time in history. We're all kin, we're all interdependent. And that's the basis of compassion, which was Jesus's ultimate teaching. — David L. Felten

The great Caltech physicist Richard Feynman once observed that if you had to reduce scientific history to one important statement it would be: "All things are made of atoms. — Bill Bryson

The shelf life of molecules is very short. Ninety-eight percent of all the atoms in my body are gone by next year. — Deepak Chopra

If the cosmos isn't finite, then far, far away, floating duplicates of your brain - with all its experiences, thoughts, and emotions - are occasionally (and temporarily) thrown together by the random combining of atoms. Such 'Boltzmann brains,' as they're called, are a disturbing consequence of an unlimited universe. — Seth Shostak

You will find scientists who will tell you - and they deeply believe it - that we're quantifiable. We are knowable. That if I can take a high enough resolution picture of all of you - not just your outsides, but your genes, your DNA, all the way down to your atoms - I can know everything about you and everything that you will be. There are people who believe this. And what this tells me is, no. No! All the way down, to the bottom of our thoughts, there's just more mystery. — Jad Abumrad

It has been discovered that all the world is made of the same atoms, that the stars are of the same stuff as ourselves. It then becomes a question of where our stuff came from. Not just where did life come from, or where did the earth come from, but where did the stuff of life and of the earth come from? — Richard P. Feynman

In the last four days I have got the (results) given by Tantalum, Chromium, Manganese, Iron , Nickel, Cobalt and Copper ... The chief result is that ... the result for any metal (is) quite easy to guess from the results for the others. This shews that the insides of all the atoms are very much alike, and from these results it will be possible to find out something of what the insides are made up of. — Henry Moseley

The surname of an atheist is compound unfortunate plus being, therefore unfortunate-beings, making all atheists unfortunate beings because human beings are created by God and not products of big bang atoms undergoing evolution. — S. E. Entsua-Mensah

And before you say this is all far-fetched, just think how far the human race has come in the past ten years. If someone had told your parents, for example, that they would be able to carry their entire music library in their pocket, would they have believed it? Now we have phones that have more computing power than was used to send some of the first rockets into space. We have electron microscopes that can see individual atoms. We routinely cure diseases that only fifty years ago was fatal. and the rate of change is increasing. Today we are able to do what your parents would of dismissed as impossible and your grandparents nothing short of magical. — Nicolas Flamel

There is more empty space in the book you're holding, than book. The electrons in the atoms of the book are moving so fast, they give the illusion of solid ink on solid paper. It's not. It's just an illusion. If all the electrons would stop moving for even an instant, the book would not just crumble into dust, it would disappear. Poof — Peter McWilliams

An extraterrestrial visitor examining the differences among human societies would find those differences trivial compared to the similarities. Our lives, our past and our future are tied to the sun, the moon and the stars ... We humans have seen the atoms which constitute all of nature and the forces that sculpted this work ... and we, who embody the local eyes and ears and thoughts and feelings of the cosmos, have begun to wonder about our origins ... star stuff contemplating the stars, organized collections of ten billion billion billion atoms, contemplating the evolution of nature, tracing that long path by which it arrived at consciousness here on the planet earth ... Our loyalties are to the species and to the planet. Our obligation to survive and flourish is owed not just to ourselves but also to that cosmos ancient and vast from which we spring. We are one species. We are star stuff harvesting star light. — Carl Sagan

If the atoms in [a] decimetre cube of lead were all put into a chain side by side the same distance apart as they are in the normal lead, the strings of atoms so formed would reach over six million million miles. — Francis William Aston

The whole cosmos is a materialized thought of the Creator. This heavy, earthly clod, floating in space, is a dream of God. He made all things out of His consciousness, even as man in his dream consciousness reproduces and vivifies a creation with its creatures. "'God first created the earth as an idea. Then He quickened it; energy atoms came into being. He coordinated the atoms into this solid sphere. All its molecules are held together by the will of God. When He withdraws His will, the earth again will disintegrate into energy. Energy will dissolve into consciousness; the earth-idea will disappear from objectivity. "'The substance of a dream is held in materialization by the — Paramahansa Yogananda

There is a cosmic "entanglement" between every atom of our body and atoms that are light-years distant. Since all matter came from a single explosion, the big bang, in some sense the atoms of our body are linked with some atoms on the other side of the universe in some kind of cosmic quantum web. Entangled particles are somewhat like twins still joined by an umbilical cord (their wave function) which can be light-years across. What happens to one member automatically affects the other, and hence knowledge concerning one particle can instantly reveal knowledge about its pair. Entangled pairs act as if they were a single object, although they may be separated by a large distance. — Michio Kaku

This is a life you do not understand. Yes, your home is in the city, and you have furnished it with vanities, with pictures and books; but you have a wife and a servant and a hundred expenses. Asleep or awake you must keep pace with the world and are never at peace. I have peace. You are welcome to your intellectual pastimes and books and art and newspapers; welcome, too, to your bars and your whisky that only makes me ill. Here am I in the forest, quite content. If you ask me intellectual questions and try to trip me up, then I will reply, for example, that God is the origin of all things and that truly men are mere specks and atoms in the universe. You are no wiser than I. But if you should go so far as to ask me what is eternity, then I know quite as much in this matter, too, and reply thus: Eternity is merely unborn time, nothing but unborn time. — Knut Hamsun

All the atoms we are made of are forged from hydrogen in stars that died and exploded before our solar system formed. So if you are romantic, you can say we are literally stardust. If you are less romantic, you can say we're the nuclear waste from fuel that makes stars shine. — Martin Rees

And then I have a secret. Did you know what will happen if you eliminate the empty spaces from the universe, eliminate the empty spaces in all the atoms? The universe will become as big as my fist.
Similarly, we have a lot of empty spaces in our lives. I call them interstices. Say you are coming over to my place. You are in an elevator and while you are coming up, I am waiting for you. This is an interstice, an empty space. I work in empty spaces. While waiting for your elevator to come up from the first to the third floor, I have already written an article! — Umberto Eco

Recognize that the very molecules that make up your body, the atoms that construct the molecules, are traceable to the crucibles that were once the centers of high mass stars that exploded their chemically rich guts into the galaxy, enriching pristine gas clouds with the chemistry of life. So that we are all connected to each other biologically, to the earth chemically and to the rest of the universe atomically. That's kinda cool! That makes me smile and I actually feel quite large at the end of that. It's not that we are better than the universe, we are part of the universe. We are in the universe and the universe is in us. — Neil DeGrasse Tyson

Since we're all composed of matter and energy, doesn't that scientific principle lend credibility to a belief in eternal life?' Mills replied more patiently and politely than I would have, for what the interviewer was saying, translated into English, was no more than: 'When we die, none of the atoms of our body (and none of the energy) are lost. Therefore we are immortal. — Richard Dawkins

Everything is made of atoms. That is the key hypothesis. The most important hypothesis in all of biology, for example, is that everything that animals do, atoms do. In other words, there is nothing that living things do that cannot be understood from the point of view that they are made of atoms acting according to the laws of physics. This — Richard Feynman

The universe evolves in consciousness of itself and causes itself to be. We are just this blessed consciousness, nothing more and nothing less. We are the light inside light that fuses into the atoms of our bodies; we are the fire that whirls across the stellar deeps and dances all things into being. — David Zindell

[Think] of an experience from your childhood. Something you remember clearly, something you can see, feel, maybe even smell, as if you were really there. After all you really were there at the time, weren't you? How else could you remember it? But here is the bombshell: you weren't there. Not a single atom that is in your body today was there when that event took place. Every bit of you has been replaced many times over (which is why you eat, of course). You are not even the same shape as you were then. The point is that you are like a cloud: something that persists over long periods, while simultaneously being in flux. Matter flows from place to place and momentarily comes together to be you. Whatever you are, therefore, you are not the stuff of which you are made. If that does not make the hair stand up on the back of your neck, read it again until it does, because it is important. — Steve Grand

First of all there is matter - and, remarkably enough, all matter is the same. The matter of which the stars are made is known to be the same as the matter on the earth ... The same kinds of atoms appear to be in living creatures as in non-living creatures. — Richard Feynman

In the world of the very small, where particle and wave aspects of reality are equally significant, things do not behave in any way that we can understand from our experience of the everyday world ... all pictures are false, and there is no physical analogy we can make to understand what goes on inside atoms. Atoms behave like atoms, nothing else. — John Gribbin

All things are aggregations of atoms that dance & by their movement produce sound. When the rhythm of the dance changes, the sound it produces also changes ... Each atom perpetually sings its song, and the sound at every moment creates dense subtle forms. — Alexandra David-Neel

There is a fundamental reason why we look at the sky with wonder and longing - for the same reason that we stand, hour after hour, gazing at the distant swell of the open ocean. There is something like an ancient wisdom, encoded and tucked away in our DNA, that knows its point of origin as surely as a salmonid knows its creek. Intellectually, we may not want to return there, but the genes know, and long for their origins - their home in the salty depths. But if the seas are our immediate source, the penultimate source is certainly the heavens.
The spectacular truth is - and this is something that your DNA has known all along - the very atoms of your body - the iron, calcium, phosphorus, carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, and on and on - were initially forged in long-dead stars. This is why, when you stand outside under a moonless, country sky, you feel some ineffable tugging at your innards. We are star stuff. Keep looking up. — Gerald D. Waxman

Mock on, mock on, Voltaire, Rousseau! Mock on, mock on: 'Tis all in vain! You throw the sand against the wind, And the wind blows it back again. And every sand becomes a gem Reflected in the beams divine; Blown back they blind the mocking eye, But still in Israel's paths they shine. The atoms of Democritus And Newton's particles of light Are sands upon the Red Sea shore, Where Israel's tents do shine so bright. — William Blake

Molecular biology has shown that even the simplest of all living systems on the earth today, bacterial cells, are exceedingly complex objects. Although the tiniest bacterial cells are incredibly small, weighing less than 10-12 gms, each is in effect a veritable micro-miniaturized factory containing thousands of exquisitely designed pieces of intricate molecular machinery, made up altogether of one hundred thousand million atoms, far more complicated than any machine built by man and absolutely without parallel in the nonliving world. — Michael Denton

Jules: Do you knwo why I'm sure? Because when this universe was born, when it blasted into existence in fire and glory, everything that would ever exist was created. Our souls are mad of that fire and glory, of the atoms of it, the fragments of stars. Everyone's are, but I believe ours, yours and mine, are made from the dust of the same star. That's why we've always been drawn to each other like magnets, all our lives. All the pieces of us belong together.
Your name, Ema, means universe, you know. Doesn't that prove I'm right? — Cassandra Clare