Sam Kean Quotes

There's a gullible side to the American people. They can be easily misled.

About seven years later I was given a book about the periodic table of the elements. For the first time I saw the elegance of scientific theory and its predictive power.

Oh mortal man, is there anything you cannot be made to believe?

The more you are in public life, the more you wonder at the credulity of the average human being.

Chemistry is not torture but instead the amazing and beautiful science of stuff, and if you give it a chance, it will not only blow your mind but also give you a deeper understanding of your world.

For me too, the periodic table was a passion. ... As a boy, I stood in front of the display for hours, thinking how wonderful it was that each of those metal foils and jars of gas had its own distinct personality.

Man's mind is so formed that it is far more susceptible to falsehood than to truth.

There are more fools in the world than there are people.

It's not mere extremism that makes folks at the fringes so troubling; it's extremism wedded to false beliefs. Humans have long been dupes, easily gulled by rumors and flat-out lies.

Some people will believe anything if you whisper it to them.

I think people are more apt to believe photographs, especially if it's something fantastic. They're willing to be more gullible. Sometimes they want fantasy.

Chemistry is a class you take in high school or college, where you figure out two plus two is 10, or something.

I still have a vivid memory of my excitement when I first saw a chart of the periodic table of elements.

We live in such a gullible world. Anything that's written, anything that's posted, anything picture that is interpreted one way is taken as truth.

Men are so simple and yield so readily to the desires of the moment that he who will trick will always find another who will suffer to be tricked.

Man is a credulous animal, and must believe something; in the absence of good grounds for belief, he will be satisfied with bad ones.

Elements and birthdays have been intertwined for me since boyhood, when I learned about atomic numbers.

My parents were like the kind of people who read the 'Enquirer' and believed everything it said.

Most people are sceptical about the wrong things and gullible about the wrong things.

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.

All the Khmer leaders and nobles, all the district chiefs and all the common people are ignorant, stupid, foolish and gullible. They have no idea what is true and what is false.

Credulity without enquiry is a sure way to deceive oneself.

The line between science and magic becomes blurred so that public judgments on technical issues can be erratic or badly flawed. It frequently appears that some people will believe almost anything. Thus judgments can be manipulated or warped by unscrupulous groups. Distortions or outright falsehoods can come to be accepted as fact.

As soon as we touch the complex processes that go on in a living thing, be it plant or animal, we are at once forced to use the methods of this science [Chemistry / Physics]. No longer will the microscope, the kymograph, the scalpel avail for the complete solution of the problem…. the investigator must associate himself with those who have labored in fields where molecules and atoms, rather than multicellular tissues or even unicellular organisms, are the units of study.

People usually tend to believe grim words rather than positive ones.