Gilbert N. Lewis famous quotes

It was not easy for a person brought up in the ways of classical thermodynamics to come around to the idea that gain of entropy eventually is nothing more nor less than loss of information.
-- Gilbert N. Lewis

#Loss #Ideas #Gains

There is always the danger in scientific work that some word or phrase will be used by different authors to express so many ideas and surmises that, unless redefined, it loses all real significance.
-- Gilbert N. Lewis

#Real #Ideas #Different

A detective with his murder mystery, a chemist seeking the structure of a new compound, use little of the formal and logical modes of reasoning. Through a series of intuitions, surmises, fancies, they stumble upon the right explanation, and have a knack of seizing it when it once comes within reach.
-- Gilbert N. Lewis

#Intuition #Use #Knack

I therefore take the liberty of proposing for this hypothetical new atom, which is not light but plays an essential part in every process of radiation, the name photon.
-- Gilbert N. Lewis

#Light #Play #Names

I take it that a monograph of this sort belongs to the ephemera literature of science. The studied care which is warranted in the treatment of the more slowly moving branches of science would be out of place here. Rather with the pen of a journalist we must attempt to record a momentary phase of current thought, which may at any instant change with kaleidoscopic abruptness.
-- Gilbert N. Lewis

#Moving #Science #Thinking

The scientist is a practical man and his are practical (i.e., practically attainable) aims. He does not seek the ultimate but the proximate. He does not speak of the last analysis but rather of the next approximation. His are not those beautiful structures so delicately designed that a single flaw may cause the collapse of the whole. The scientist builds slowly and with a gross but solid kind of masonry. If dissatisfied with any of his work, even if it be near the very foundations, he can replace that part without damage to the remainder.
-- Gilbert N. Lewis

#Beautiful #Science #Men

We frequently define an acid or a base as a substance whose aqueous solution gives, respectively, a higher concentration of hydrogen ion or of hydroxide ion than that furnished by pure water. This is a very one sided definition.
-- Gilbert N. Lewis

#Ions #Giving #Water

Since hydrogen is a constituent of most of our electrolytic solvents, the definition of an acid or base as a substance which gives up or takes up hydrogen ion would be more general than the one we used before, but it would not be universal.
-- Gilbert N. Lewis

#Giving Up #Ions #Would Be

We may say that a basic substance is one which has a lone pair of electrons which may be used to complete the stable group of another atom, and that an acid is one which can employ a lone pair from another molecule in completing the stable group of one of its own atoms.
-- Gilbert N. Lewis

#Groups #Molecules #Atoms

Someday, I have no doubt, the dead from today's wars will be seen with a similar sense of sorrow at needless loss and folly as those millions of men who lie in the cemeteries of France and Belgium - and tens of millions of Americans will feel a similar revulsion for the politicians and generals who were so spendthrift with others' lives.

...Almost everything inside was filled with sugar, cheese, and weight-loss tips.

The truth and the facts aren't necessarily the same thing. Telling the truth is the object of all art; facts are what the unimaginative have instead of ideas.

The Empress has been connected with the ideas of universal fecundity and in a general sense with activity.

There's a very passionate pro-chewing movement on the Internet called Chewdiasm. They say that we should be chewing 50 to 100 times per mouthful, which is insane. I tried that. It takes like a day and a half to eat a sandwich. But their basic idea is right. If you chew, you'll eat slower and you will get more nutrients.

Once I went to bed in Orlando and I woke up in Atlanta. I have no idea how that happened.

I said, ‘There’s one idea I’ve been carrying in my hip pocket for 35 years. It’s Woodrow Wilson.’

The man with but one idea in his head is sure to exaggerate that to top-heaviness, and thus he loses his equilibrium.

To gain profit is important, but you must invest to build up assets that you can cash in in the future.

If we allow terrorism to undermine our freedom of action, we could reverse at least part of the palpable gains achieved by postwar globalization. It is incumbent upon us not to allow that to happen.