“What is literature but an insider's newsletter about affairs relating to molecules, of no importance to anything in the Universe but a few molecules who have the disease called "thought."”
Source: Bluebeard (1987), p. 188
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Kurt Vonnegut 318
American writer 1922–2007Related quotes
“A diatomic molecule is a molecule with one atom too many.”
as quoted in [Dave DeMille, Diatomic molecules, a window onto fundamental physics, Physics Today, 2015, December, 34, 68, 12, 10.1063/PT.3.3020]
[Bakerian lecture.―On the statistical and thermodynamical relations of radiant energy, Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. Series A, 83, 560, 1909, 82–95, 10.1098/rspa.1909.0080] (p. 82)
The Varieties of Scientific Experience: A Personal View of the Search for God (2006)
Context: Let's say there's a molecule that produces a religious experience... a natural molecule that the body produces whose function it is to produce religious experiences, at least on occasion?... So let's call it "theophorin"... What could the selective advantage of theophorin be?... to suit us for the quest that was, according to Dostoyevsky, to strive for nothing so incessantly and so painfully as to find someone to worship and obey.
Source: The Hour of the Star (1977), p. 11
Burnet, F.M. (1970) Immunological Surveillance. Pergamon Press. pp. 240-241.
“When you're dancing the mystical dance of the molecules, you're not the one who's leading.”
"Trudy"
The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe (1985)
“When you're dancing the mystical dance of the molecules, you're not the one who's leading.”
As "Trudy"
Contributions of Jane Wagner, The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe (1985)
A Sketch of a Personalistic Universe (1936)
Context: There is neither spirit nor matter in the world; the stuff of the universe is spirit-matter. No other substance but this could produce the human molecule. I know very well that this idea of spirit-matter is regarded as a hybrid monster, a verbal exorcism of a duality which remains unresolved in its terms. But I remain convinced that the objections made to it arise from the mere fact that few people can make up their minds to abandon an old point of view and take the risk of a new idea. … Biologists or philosophers cannot conceive a biosphere or noosphere because they are unwilling to abandon a certain narrow conception of individuality. Nevertheless, the step must be taken. For in fact, pure spirituality is as unconceivable as pure materiality. Just as, in a sense, there is no geometrical point, but as many structurally different points as there are methods of deriving them from different figures, so every spirit derives its reality and nature from a particular type of universal synthesis.