Bill Bryson Quotes

It is probable that all heavy matter possesses—latent and bound up with the structure of the atom—a similar quantity of energy to that possessed by radium. If it could be tapped and controlled, what an agent it would be in shaping the world’s destiny. The man who put his hand on the lever by which a parsimonious nature regulates so jealously the output of this store of energy, would possess a weapon by which he could destroy the earth if he chose.

The human relationship to combustion is as mysterious as it is fraught with madness. From the candle flame to the nuclear blast, it has lit up the human imagination with fear and fascination.

So terrible a weapon simply had to have an important peaceful use ... We were grimly determined to prove that this discovery was not just a weapon.

Energy Is Conserved.

I don't know why people are always afraid of a nuclear blast.

… use of high yield nuclear weapons invariably created adverse public opinion … Greater emphasis should be placed on small atomic weapons.

There is no doubt that sub-atomic energy is available all around us .... One day man will release and control its almost infinite power.

These experiments might make it possible to produce power by means of nuclear energy and radioactive elements. Unfortunately also perhaps atomic bombs.

It remained for the twentieth century to discover that locked within the atom is the energy of the sun itself. For this energy to be released, however, the atom must be bombarded from without. So too, locked in every human being is a store of love that partakes of the divine-the imago dei-image of God, it is sometimes called. And it too can be activated only through bombardment, in its case love's bombardment

Typical of the fundamental scientific problems whose solution should lead to important industrial consequences are, for example, the release of atomic energy, which experiment has shown to exist in quantities millions of times greater than is liberated by combustion.

Energy may be likened to the bending of a crossbow; decision, to the releasing of a trigger.

Power exhibits itself under two distinct forms,--strength and force,--each possessing peculiar qualities, and each perfect in its own sphere. Strength is typified by the oak, the rock, the mountain. Force embodies itself in the cataract, the tempest, and the thunder-bolt.

I happened to read recently a remark by the American nuclear physicist W. Davidson, who noted that the explosion of one hydrogen bomb releases a greater amount of energy than all the explosions set off by all countries in all wars known in the entire history of mankind. And he, apparently, is right.

If you are involved totally, sex disappears because sex is a safety valve. When you have energy unused, then sex becomes a haunting thing around you. When total energy is used, sex disappears. And that is the state of brahmacharya, of virya, of all your potential energy flowering.

Everybody has the same energy potential. The average person wastes his in a dozen little ways. I bring mine to bear on one thing only: my paintings, and everything else is sacrificed to it...myself included.

The cumulative amount of man-made global pollution that's in the atmosphere now traps as much extra heat energy every day as would be released by 400,000 Hiroshima-class atomic bombs exploding every day. It's a big planet, but that's an awful lot of energy.

So, there's quite a big keep-out zone, and when you factor the keep-out zone into account, the solar panels put on that area would typically generate more power than that nuclear power plant.

From the aspect of energy, renewed by radio-active phenomena, material corpuscles may now be treated as transient reservoirs of concentrated power. Though never found in a state of purity, but always more or less granulated (even in light) energy nowadays represents for science the most primitive form of universal stuff.

This new power, which has proved itself to be such a terrifying weapon of destruction, is harnessed for the first time for the common good of our community.

I think if a man can create something like an atom bomb, he can surely create something with his own mind.

Although mechanical energy is indestructible, there is a universal tendency to its dissipation, which produces throughout the system a gradual augmentation and diffusion of heat, cessation of motion and exhaustion of the potential energy of the material Universe

I actually pointed my wand and it blew up! The power! The power was just like Angry Birds, but big [as] life.

Each obsession is a knot in your being. Once it is opened, great energy is released

Our energy is in proportion to the resistance it meets.

For the first time ever, we have confronted in reality the sinister power of uncontrolled nuclear energy.