Quotes & Sayings About Organic Molecules

The following general definition of an animal: a system of different organic molecules that have combined with one another, under the impulsion of a sensation similar to an obtuse and muffled sense of touch given to them by the creator of matter as a whole, until each one of them has found the most suitable position for its shape and comfort. — Denis Diderot

Within the chemically rich liquid oceans, by a mechanism yet to be discovered, organic molecules transitioned to self-replicating life. — Neil DeGrasse Tyson

Originally, the atoms of carbon from which we're made were floating in the air, part of a carbon dioxide molecule. The only way to recruit these carbon atoms for the molecules necessary to support life - the carbohydrates, amino acids, proteins, and lipids - is by means of photosynthesis. Using sunlight as a catalyst the green cells of plants combine carbon atoms taken from the air with water and elements drawn from the soil to form the simple organic compounds that stand at the base of every food chain. It is more than a figure of speech to say that plants create life out of thin air. — Michael Pollan

A comprehensively reductive conception is favored by the belief that the propensity for the development of organisms with a subjective view must have been there from the beginning, just as the propensity for the formation of atoms, molecules, galaxies, and organic compounds must have been there from the beginning. — Thomas Nagel

Four elements, Hydrogen, carbon, oxygen and nitrogen, also provide an example of the astonishing togetherness of our universe. They make up the "organic" molecules that constitute living organisms on a planet, and the nuclei of these same elements interact to generate the light of its star. Then the organisms on the planet come to depend wholly on that starlight, as they must if life is to persist. So it is that all life on the Earth runs on sunlight. [Referring to photosynthesis] — George Wald

When tadpole tails shrink in size,
their constituents are being broken down by lysosomes, and these organic molecules are then reabsorbed to fuel the growth of new structures such as the frog's budding arms and legs. — Steven Daniel Garber

Receptor chemistry, the chemistry of artificial receptor molecules, may be considered a generalized coordination chemistry, not limited to transition metal ions but extending to all types of substrates: cationic, anionic or neutral species of organic, inorganic or biological nature. — Jean-Marie Lehn

Imagine trying to live in a world dominated by dihydrogen oxide, a compound that has no taste or smell and is so variable in its properties that it is generally benign but at other times swiftly lethal. Depending on its state, it can scald you or freeze you. In the presence of certain organic molecules it can form carbonic acids so nasty that they can strip the leaves from trees and eat the faces off statuary. In bulk, when agitated, it can strike with a fury that no human edifice could withstand. Even for those who have learned to live with it, it is an often murderous substance. We call it water. — Bill Bryson

When you look more generally at life on Earth, you find that it is all the same kind of life. There are not many different kinds; there's only one kind. It uses about fifty fundamental biological building blocks, organic molecules. — Carl Sagan

It does not seem, however, that organic chemists were much worried about barriers to rotation in organic molecules in general at that time because there was no technique available to demonstrate the phenomenon experimentally. — Derek Harold Richard Barton

I will tell you sincerely and without exaggeration that the best part of lunch today at the NASA Ames cafeteria is the urine. It is clear and sweet, though not in the way mountain streams are said to be clear and sweet. More in the way of Karo syrup. The urine has been desalinated by osmotic pressure. Basically it swapped molecules with a concentrated sugar solution. Urine is a salty substance (though less so than the NASA Ames chili), and if you were to drink it in an effort to rehydrate yourself, it would have the opposite effect. But once the salt is taken care of and the distasteful organic molecules have been trapped in an activated charcoal filter, urine is a restorative and surprisingly drinkable lunchtime beverage. I was about to use the word unobjectionable, but that's not accurate. People object. They object a lot. — Mary Roach

One day I discovered that one could get the barrier to internal rotation in ethane approximately right using this method. This was the beginning of my work on organic molecules. — Roald Hoffmann

Most commercial products that contain organic molecules possess at least one carbon-carbon double bond, or if one is not present, it is likely that an olefin was used in its preparation. This being the case, the potential applications of olefin metathesis are endless. — Robert H. Grubbs

The same few dozen organic molecules are used over and over again in biology for the widest variety of functions. — Carl Sagan

Reagents are regarded as acting by virtue of a constitutional affinity either for electrons or for nuclei ... the terms electrophilic (electron-seeking) and nucleophilic (nucleus-seeking) are suggested ... and the organic molecule, in the activation necessary for reaction, is therefore required to develop at the seat of attack either a high or low electron density as the case may be. — Christopher Kelk Ingold

The tar is an extremely rich collection of complex organic molecules, including the constituent parts of proteins and nucleic acids. The stuff of life, it turns out, can be very easily made. — 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

Long ago, when an early galaxy began to pour light out into the surrounding darkness, no witness could have known that billions of years later some remote clumps of rock and metal, ice and organic molecules would fall together to make place called Earth; or that life would arise and thinking beings evolve who would one day capture a little of that galactic light, and try to puzzle out what had sent it on its way. And after the earth dies, some 5 billion years from now, after it's burned to a crisp, or even swallowed by the Sun, there will be other worlds and stars and galaxies coming into being
and they will know nothing of a place once called Earth. — Carl Sagan