Splitting The Atom Quotes:

Splitting the atom is like trying to shoot a gnat in the Albert Hall at night and using ten million rounds of ammunition on the off chance of getting it. That should convince you that the atom will always be a sink of energy and never a reservoir of energy.

- Ernest Rutherford

topic: Splitting The Atom, Ammunition

It has been rightly said that nothing is unimportant, nothing powerless in the universe; a single atom can dissolve everything, and save everything! What terror! There lies the eternal distinction between good and evil.

- Gerard De Nerval

source: Martin Esslin (2009). “The Theatre of the Absurd”, p.16, Vintage

topic: Lying, Evil, Atoms, Splitting The Atom, Unimportant Things

The terror of the atom age is not the violence of the new power but the speed of man's adjustment to it, the speed of his acceptance.

- E. B. White

source: E. B. WHITE (1954). “The SECOND TREE from the CORNER”

topic: Acceptance, Power, Men, Splitting The Atom

The splitting of the atom has changed everything except for how we think.

- Albert Einstein

topic: Freedom, Thinking, Inspire, Splitting The Atom

I would rather be ashes than dust! I would rather that my spark should burn out in a brilliant blaze than it should be stifled by dry-rot. I would rather be a superb meteor, every atom of me in magnificent glow, than a sleepy and permanent planet. The function of man is to live, not to exist. I shall not waste my days trying to prolong them. I shall use my time.

- Jack London

source: Quoted in Bulletin (San Francisco), 2 Dec. 1916.

topic: Inspirational, Life, Ambition, Blazing, Inspiration To Write

The atom bomb is a paper tiger which the United States reactionaries use to scare people. It looks terrible, but in fact it isn't.

- Mao Zedong

source: Interview by Anne Louise Strong, Aug. 1946

topic: People, Scare, United States, Splitting The Atom, Reactionaries

Football tactics are rapidly becoming as complicated as the chemical formula for splitting the atom.

- Jimmy Greaves

topic: Football, Atoms, Tactics, Splitting The Atom

New needs need new techniques. And the modern artists have found new ways and new means of making their statements... the modern painter cannot express this age, the airplane, the atom bomb, the radio, in the old forms of the Renaissance or of any other past culture.

- Jackson Pollock

topic: Airplane, Mean, Past, Splitting The Atom, Modern Age

The scientists split the atom; now the atom is splitting us.

- Quentin Reynolds

topic: Splits, Atoms, Scientist, Splitting The Atom, Splitting

The bikini is the most important thing since the atom bomb.

- Diana Vreeland

topic: Important, Atoms, Bombs, Splitting The Atom

Behaviorism proposes to study human behavior according to the methods developed by animal and infant psychology. It seeks to investigate reflexes and instincts, automatisms and unconscious reactions. But it has told us nothing about the reflexes that have built cathedrals, railroads, and fortresses, the instincts that have produced philosophies, poems, and legal systems, the automatisms that have resulted in the growth and decline of empires, the unconscious reactions that are splitting atoms.

- Ludwig von Mises

topic: Philosophy, Animal, Psychology, Splitting The Atom, Behaviorism

You can stop splitting the atom; you can stop visiting the moon; you can stop using aerosols; you may even decide not to kill entire populations by the use of a few bombs. But you cannot recall a new form of life.

- Erwin Chargaff

source: Erwin Chargaff (1978). “Heraclitean Fire: Sketches from a Life Before Nature”, p.189, Paul & Company Pub Consortium

topic: Moon, Population, Atoms, Splitting The Atom

[Decoding the human genome sequence] is the most significant undertaking that we have mounted so far in an organized way in all of science. I believe that reading our blueprints, cataloguing our own instruction book, will be judged by history as more significant than even splitting the atom or going to the moon.

- Francis Collins

topic: Believe, Book, Reading, Splitting The Atom