“The final result of our researches has widened the class of substances sensitive to light vibrations, until we can propound the fact of such sensitiveness being a general property of all matter.”

— Alexander Graham Bell

Statement to the American Association for the Advancement of Science, in Boston, Massachusetts (27 August 1880): published as "On the Production and Reproduction of Sound by Light" in American Journal of Sciences, Third Series, vol. XX, n°118 (October 1880), pp. 305-324.

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scientist and inventor known for his work on the telephone 1847–1922

Paul Lewis Anderson (1880–1956) American photographer and writer

Source: Pictorial Photography - It's Principles and Practice (1917), Chapter I - The Camera, p. 1

“We cannot be more sensitive to pleasure without being more sensitive to pain.”

Alan Watts book The Wisdom of Insecurity

Source: The Wisdom of Insecurity: A Message for an Age of Anxiety

“If our memories are as absorbent as research has demonstrated, our awareness as wide, our brains and bodies as sensitive; if we can will changes in our physiology at the level of a single cell; if we are heirs to such evolutionary virtuosity—how can we be performing and learning at such mediocre levels? If we're so rich, why aren't we smart?”

Marilyn Ferguson (1938–2008) American writer

Source: The Aquarian Conspiracy (1980), Chapter Nine, Flying and Seeing: New Ways to Learn, p. 279

“Who can still believe in the opacity of bodies since our sharpened and modified sensitivity has already penetrated the obscure manifestations of the medium? Why should we forget in our creations the double power of our sight, capable of giving results analogous to those of X-rays?”

Umberto Boccioni (1882–1916) Italian painter and sculptor

As quoted in Futurism, ed. Didier Ottinger; Centre Pompidou / 5 Continents Editions, Milan, 2008, p. 154.
1910, Manifesto of Futurist Painters,' April 1910

“As a man who has devoted his whole life to the most clearheaded science, to the study of matter, I can tell you as a result of my research about the atoms this much: There is no matter as such! All matter originates and exists only by virtue of a force which brings the particles of an atom to vibration and holds this most minute solar system of the atom together…. We must assume behind this force the existence of a conscious and intelligent Spirit. This Spirit is the matrix of all matter.”

Max Planck (1858–1947) German theoretical physicist

Das Wesen der Materie [The Nature of Matter], a 1944 speech in Florence, Italy, Archiv zur Geschichte der Max‑ Planck‑ Gesellschaft, Abt. Va, Rep. 11 Planck, Nr. 1797; the German original is as quoted in The Spontaneous Healing of Belief https://archive.org/stream/GreggBradenTheSpontaneousHealingOfBelief/Gregg%20Braden/Gregg%20Braden%20-%20The%20Spontaneous%20Healing%20Of%20Belief#page/n1 (2008) by Gregg Braden, p. 212; Braden mistranslates intelligenten Geist as "intelligent Mind", which is an obvious tautology.

“We are products of a past world where sensitivities to certain things were a matter of life or death.”

John D. Barrow (1952–2020) British scientist

The Artful Universe (1995)
Context: The Universe has imposed aspects of its structure upon us by the inevitability of the forces of Nature... In a world where adapters succeed, but non-adapters fail, one expects to find vestigial remnants... Many of these adaptations... give rise to a suite of curious byproducts, some of which have played a role in determining our aesthetic sense. We are products of a past world where sensitivities to certain things were a matter of life or death.<!-- Ch. 6, p.246

“Every instrument that has been designed to be sensitive enough to detect weak light has always ended up discovering that the same thing: light is made of particles.”

Richard Feynman book QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter

Source: QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter (1985), p. 15

“I'm the Imelda Marcos of sunglasses…. Very sensitive eyes to light.”

Bono (1960) Irish rock musician, singer of U2

On his sunglasses; Imelda Marcos famously had a huge collection of shoes.
Rolling Stone interview (2005)
Context: I'm the Imelda Marcos of sunglasses.... Very sensitive eyes to light. If somebody takes my photograph, I will see the flash for the rest of the day. My right eye swells up. I've a blockage there, so that my eyes go red a lot. So it's part vanity, it's part privacy and part sensitivity.

“When the medicine enters the body and stops the pain, the vibrations from the combined substances stop, and the various substances return to their original states, in which they emit their original vibrations. However, if these vibrations happen to damage other cell structures, then harmful side effects will result.”

Masaru Emoto (1943–2014) Japanese writer

Source: The Hidden Messages in Water

“PARADOX: A statement that reduces the matter at hand to complete obscurity while clarifying it. […] Paradoxes are sensitive and can be routed by sneering.”

Gene Wolfe (1931–2019) American science fiction and fantasy writer

"Words Weird and Wonderful", in Castle of the Otter (1982), Reprinted in Gene Wolfe, Castle of Days (1992)
Nonfiction

“The final result of our researches has widened the class of substances sensitive to light vibrations, until we can propound the fact of such sensitiveness being a general property of all matter.”

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