“It seems to me immensely unlikely that mind is a mere by-product of matter. For if my mental processes are determined wholly by the motions of atoms in my brain I have no reason to suppose that my beliefs are true. They may be sound chemically, but that does not make them sound logically. And hence I have no reason for supposing my brain to be composed of atoms.”

"When I am Dead" in Possible Worlds (1927)

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J. B. S. Haldane32

Geneticist and evolutionary biologist 1892–1964

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“The reason that I call my doctrine logical atomism is because the atoms that I wish to arrive at as the sort of last residue in analysis are logical atoms and not physical atoms. Some of them will be what I call "particulars" – such things as little patches of color or sounds, momentary things – and some of them will be predicates or relations and so on.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

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“Miniaturization doesn't actually make sense unless you miniaturize the very atoms of which matter is composed. Otherwise a tiny brain in a man the size of an insect, composed of normal atoms, is composed of too few atoms for the miniaturized man to be any more intelligent than the ant. Also, miniaturizing atoms is impossible according to the rules of quantum mechanics.”

Isaac Asimov (1920–1992) American writer and professor of biochemistry at Boston University, known for his works of science fiction …

As quoted in Omni's Screen Flights/Screen Fantasies (1984) edited by Danny Peary, p. 5
General sources

“The atoms in the philosophy of do not move merely by chance. Leucippus seems to have believed in complete determinism, since he is known to have said: "Naught happens for nothing, but everything from a ground and of necessity." The atomists did not give any reason for the original motion of the atoms, which just shows that they thought of a causal description of the atomic motion; causality can only explain later events by earlier events, but it can never explain the beginning.”

Werner Heisenberg (1901–1976) German theoretical physicist

Physics and Philosophy (1958)

“1. Small particles called atoms exist and compose all matter; 2. They are indivisible and indestructible; 3. Atoms of the same chemical element have the same chemical properties and do not transmute or change into different elements.”

John Dalton (1766–1844) English chemist, meteorologist and physicist

A New System of Chemical Philosophy, Part I http://books.google.com/books?id=Wp7QAAAAMAAJ (1808) as quoted by Richard Reeves, A Force of Nature The Frontier Genius of Ernest Rutherford (2008)