Gregory Benford Quotes

I tried out various experiments described in treatises on physics and chemistry, and the results were sometimes unexpected. At times, I would be encouraged by a little unhoped-for success; at others, I would be in the deepest despair because of accidents and failures resulting from my inexperience.

At the age of 12, my parents gave me a chemistry set for Christmas, and experimentation soon became a consuming passion in my life.

I was studying chemistry, and this is a physically hard job because you are in the laboratory, you work hard, and you come home in the late afternoon or in the evening and you always needed a break.

My mom's a chemist, so she's pretty smart. I love technology and I can handle myself around a computer.

I worked at chemistry and developing a style of play on both sides of the ball and studied success and winning.

I work so hard, but... everything just goes my way! It's insane!

I was in the lab for a long time before I actually, like, put stuff out.

Half of art is accident, but there is no accident without free experiment.

An experiment not worth doing is not worth doing well.

It's all about chemistry. Talent alone won't get it done.

Experiences are the chemicals of life with which the philosopher experiments

Verily, chemistry is not a splitting of hairs when you have got half a dozen raw Irishmen in the laboratory.

We all teach ... the chemistry of Lavoisier and Gay-Lussac.

The happy combination of fortuitous circumstances.

Don't be a writer. Writing is an escape from something. You be a scientist.

When something works for you, all you can do is cross your fingers and hope that it will work for someone else.

Do as many ideas as possible. The right idea will pick you.

Chance favours a prepared mind.

They had not yet attained the stupefying boredom of omnipotence; their experiments did not always succeed.

I have been so electrically occupied of late that I feel as if hungry for a little chemistry: but then the conviction crosses my mind that these things hang together under one law & that the more haste we make onwards each in his own path the sooner we shall arrive, and meet each other, at that state of knowledge of natural causes from which all varieties of effects may be understood & enjoyed.

Let the experiment be made.

Every failed experiment is one step closer to success.

The sequence of theorist, experimenter, and discovery has occasionally been compared to the sequence of farmer, pig, truffle. The farmer leads the pig to an area where there might be truffles. The pig searches diligently for the truffles. Finally, he locates one, and just as he is about to devour it, the farmer snatches it away.

One of the major ingredients for professional success in science is luck. Without this, forget it.

After hard work, the biggest determinant is being in the right place at the right time.