Langmuir Quotes & Sayings

He smiled at her and gave a reassuring wink. He couldn't help himself. Chance figured old habits die hard, but the fact was when he grinned at her, or winked, he wasn't trying to get into her pants. He truly grinned with her. She made him smile. She could prove to be a good friend — Shyloh Morgan

[In the case of research director, Willis R. Whitney, whose style was to give talented investigators as much freedom as possible, you may define 'serendipity' as] the art of profiting from unexpected occurrences. When you do things in that way you get unexpected results. Then you do something else and you get unexpected results in another line, and you do that on a third line and then all of a sudden you see that one of these lines has something to do with the other. Then you make a discovery that you never could have made by going on a direct road. — Irving Langmuir

Train yourselves. Don't wait to be fed knowledge out of a book. Get out and seek it. Make explorations. Do your own research work. Train your hands and your mind. Become curious. Invent your own problems and solve them. You can see things going on all about you. Inquire into them. Seek out answers to your own questions. There are many phenomena going on in nature the explanation of which cannot be found in books. Find out why these phenomena take place. Information a boy gets by himself is enormously more valuable than that which is taught to him in school. — Irving Langmuir

And literature frequently rises to heights that make it international. — Irving Langmuir

Many of the things that have happened in the laboratory have happened in ways it would have been impossible to foresee, but not impossible to plan for in a sense. I do not think Dr. Whitney deliberately plans his serendipity but he is built that way; he has the art-an instinctive way of preparing himself by his curiosity and by his interest in people and in all kinds of things and in nature, so that the things he learns react on one another and thereby accomplish things that would be impossible to foresee and plan. — Irving Langmuir

This coupling together of science with international peace, is, I think, particularly significant. — Irving Langmuir

I'm really fascinated and you know I've been wondering about that usage of language, various breathing techniques and why in these practices language is being used in another way. — Kathy Acker

To my mind, the most important aspect of the Nobel Awards is that they bring home to the masses of the peoples of all nations, a realization of their common interests. They carry to those who have no direct contact with science the international spirit. — Irving Langmuir

It was odd
unsettling, actually
how love magnified everything. Small joy was turned into overwhelming happiness; worry became heart-stopping fear. It was as if love became a magnifying glass turned on the heart, taking whatever was there and making it appear many times its normal size. — Michael Thomas Ford

[There] are cases where there is no dishonesty involved but where people are tricked into false results by a lack of understanding about what human beings can do to themselves in the way of being led astray by subjective effects, wishful thinking or threshold interactions. These are examples of pathological science. These are things that attracted a great deal of attention. Usually hundreds of papers have been published upon them. Sometimes they have lasted for fifteen or twenty years and then they gradually die away. — Irving Langmuir

I used to be shy about ordering a steak after I had eaten a steak sandwich, but I got used to it. — A.J. Liebling

Life is not fair, but it is what we have to deal with. And we are going to deal with it so that we can live. No, so that we can thrive. — Jessica Park

Happy indeed is the scientist who not only has the pleasures which I have enumerated, but who also wins the recognition of fellow scientists and of the mankind which ultimately benefits from his endeavors. — Irving Langmuir

History proves abundantly that pure science, undertaken without regard to applications to human needs, is usually ultimately of direct benefit to mankind. — Irving Langmuir

Irony is the cultivation of the spirit and therefore follows next after immediacy; then comes the ethicist, then the humourist, then the religious person. — Soren Kierkegaard

Only a small part of scientific progress has resulted from planned search for specific objectives. A much more important part has been made possible by the freedom of the individual to follow his own curiosity. — Irving Langmuir

I have never been nervous in all my life and I have no patience with people who are. If you know what you are going to do, you have no reason to be nervous. And I knew what I was going to do. — Mary Garden

The scientist is motivated primarily by curiosity and a desire for truth. — Irving Langmuir

Langmuir is a regular thinking machine. Put in facts, and you get out a theory. — Saul Dushman

A chemist who does not know mathematics is seriously handicapped. — Irving Langmuir

You'd rather own gold; not the miner — Kevin O'Leary

One of these days I'd really like to win a battle, rather than just stand quiet while they lose it at me. You know, just to be able say I'd done it. But I'm not complaining. I mean, it works. — K.J. Parker

Zebra babies can flat-out run within an hour of being born, because if they can't, they're dead. We were like zebras, so poor we didn't know how poor we were, and tough and independent because there wasn't any other way to be. — Willie Parker

Science, almost from its beginnings, has been truly international in character. National prejudices disappear completely in the scientist's search for truth. — Irving Langmuir

Everything I do is metal. When I clean my house, it's metal. — Scott Ian

I play weird. I'm always just behind. We [drummers] only have so much room. We're not guitarists. — Ringo Starr

What was a lie in the father becomes a conviction in the son. — Friedrich Nietzsche

Famine is good to the corn-merchant, evil to the poor, and indifferent to those whose fortunes can at all times command a superfluity. Ambition is evil to the restless bosom it inhabits, to the innumerable victims who are dragged by its ruthless thirst for infamy, to expire in every variety of anguish, to the inhabitants of the country it depopulates, and to the human race whose improvement it retards; it is indifferent with regard to the system of the Universe, and is good only to the vultures and the jackals that track the conqueror's career, and to the worms who feast in security on the desolation of his progress. It is manifest that we cannot reason with respect to the universal system from that which only exists in relation to our own perceptions. — Christopher Hitchens