Linus Pauling Quotes

Biology

Industrial opportunities are going to stem more from the biological sciences than from chemistry and physics. I see biology as being the greatest area of scientific breakthroughs in the next generation.

Evolution isn't just a take-it-or-leave-it story about where we came from. It's an epic at the centre of life itself. It tells us we are part of nature in every respect.

To describe the overwhelming life of a tropical forest just in terms of inert biochemistry and DNA didn't seem to give a very full picture of the world.

Biology, meaning the science of all life, is a late notion.

In research, I wanted to establish the medicinal chemistry/bioassay conjugation as an academic pursuit, as exciting to the imagination as astrophysics or molecular biology.

What I was concerned with was life: what are the major features that are common to all living organisms that subtly define life. So I looked at the whole problem as a chemist, as a biochemist, and as a molecular biologist.

There is a close analogy between organic chemistry in its relation to biochemistry and pure mathematics in its relation to physics.

I have lived much of my life among molecules. They are good company.

Life exists in the universe only because the carbon atom possesses certain exceptional properties.

Few scientists acquainted with the chemistry of biological systems at the molecular level can avoid being inspired.

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.

I like biology a lot.

We share deep admiration for evolution, a force of Nature that has led to the finest chemistry of all time, and to all living things on this planet.

I took pre-med courses in college.

Life is the mode of action of proteins.

The blooming of a flower is, in my mind, not a miracle. It's something that we can understand on the basis of molecular biology these days.

We know from astronomy that the universe had a beginning, from physics that the future is both open and unpredictable, from geology and paleontology that the whole of life has been a process of change and transformation. From biology we know that our tissues are not impenetrable reservoirs of vital magic, but a stunning matrix of complex wonders, ultimately explicable in terms of biochemistry and molecular biology. With such knowledge we can see, perhaps for the first time, why a Creator would have allowed our species to be fashioned by the process of evolution.

There is no clear distinction anywhere on the Earth's surface between living and nonliving matter. There is merely a hierarchy of intensity going from the 'material' environment of the rocks and the atmosphere to the living cells.

It is impossible to encircle the hips of a girl with my right arm and hold her smile in my left hand, then proceed to study the two items separately. Similarly, we can not separate life from living matter, in order to study only living matter and its reactions. Inevitably, studying living matter and its reactions, we study life itself

Life is just chemicals. A drop here, a drip there, everything's changed. A mere dribble of fermented juices and sudenlly you're going to live another few hours.

Death is very likely the single best invention of life.

Our body is a machine for living.

Every cell is a triumph of natural selection, and we’re made of trillions of cells. Within us, is a little universe.

Love is a romantic designation for a most ordinary biological process-or, shall we say, chemical-process ... a lot of nonsense is talked and written about it.