Energy is liberated matter, matter is energy waiting to happ... - Bill Bryson, A Short History of Nearly Everything

"There are three stages in scientific discovery. First, people deny that it is true, then they deny that it is important; finally they credit the wrong person."

"When the poet Paul Valery once asked Albert Einstein if he kept a notebook to record his ideas, Einstein looked at him with mild but genuine surprise. "Oh, that's not necessary,"he replied . "It's so seldom I have one."

"In France, a chemist named Pilatre de Rozier tested the flammability of hydrogen by gulping a mouthful and blowing across an open flame, proving at a stroke that hydrogen is indeed explosively combustible and that eyebrows are not necessarily a permanent feature of one's face."

"Consider the Lichen. Lichens are just about the hardiest visible organisms on Earth, but the least ambitious."

"It is a slightly arresting notion that if you were to pick yourself apart with tweezers, one atom at a time, you would produce a mound of fine atomic dust, none of which had ever been alive but all of which had once been you."