“All life is nucleic acid; the rest is commentary”
Isaac Asimov book The Relativity of Wrong
"The Relativity of Wrong" (1988) - "Beginning with Bone" (May 1987)
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“Start with a planet like the earth, with a complement of simple compounds bound to exist upon it, add the energy of a nearby sun, and you are bound to end with nucleic acids. You can't avoid it.”
"Constructing a Man" in Is Anyone There? (1967), p. 93
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Isaac Asimov303
American writer and professor of biochemistry at Boston Uni… 1920–1992Related quotes
“We are bound, you and I, and nothing on this earth shall part me from you.”
Diana Gabaldon book Dragonfly in Amber
Source: Dragonfly in Amber
Robert M. Pirsig book Lila: An Inquiry into Morals
Lila (1991)
Context: The Second Law of Thermodynamics states that all energy systems run down like a clock and never rewind themselves. But life not only 'runs up,' converting low energy sea-water, sunlight and air into high-energy chemicals, it keeps multiplying itself into more and better clocks that keep 'running up' faster and faster. Why, for example, should a group of simple, stable compounds of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen struggle for billions of years to organize themselves into a professor of chemistry? What's the motive? If we leave a chemistry professor out on a rock in the sun long enough the forces of nature will convert him into simple compounds of carbon, oxygen, hydrogen and nitrogen, calcium, phosphorus, and small amounts of other minerals. It's a one-way reaction. No matter what kind of chemistry professor we use and no matter what process we use we can't turn these compounds back into a chemistry professor. Chemistry professors are unstable mixtures of predominantly unstable compounds which, in the exclusive presence of the sun's heat, decay irreversibly into simpler organic and inorganic compounds. That's a scientific fact. The question is: Then why does nature reverse this process? What on earth causes the inorganic compounds to go the other way? It isn't the sun's energy. We just saw what the sun's energy did. It has to be something else. What is it?
Woody Guthrie (1912–1967) American singer-songwriter and folk musician
All You Fascists (1944) https://www.woodyguthrie.org/Lyrics/All_You_Fascists.htm
Yann Martel (1963) Canadian author best known for the book Life of Pi
Source: Beatrice & Virgil (2010), p. 103
Context: To my mind, faith is like being in the sun. When you are in the sun, can you avoid creating a shadow? Can you shake that area of darkness that clings to you, always shaped like you, as if constantly to remind you of yourself? You can't. This shadow is doubt. And it goes wherever you go as long as you stay in the sun. And who wouldn't want to be in the sun?
“Books are carefully folded forests/void of autumn/bound from the sun”
Saul Williams (1972) American singer, musician, poet, writer, and actor
Gertrude Stein (1874–1946) American art collector and experimental writer of novels, poetry and plays
Source: Everybody’s Autobiography (1937), Ch. 3