“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.”

— Bill Bryson , book A Short History of Nearly Everything

Pages 1-2
Source: A Short History of Nearly Everything (2003)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "It is a slightly arresting notion that if you were to pick yourself apart with tweezers, one atom at a time, you would …" by Bill Bryson?

Bill Bryson 112

American author 1951

Related quotes

“In 1925 Heisenberg made a new attempt, on entirely novel lines, to obtain an explanation of atomic spectra. Working in collaboration with Bohr, he had come to the conclusion that the imperfections of Bohr's theory had been a consequence of assuming too simple a model for the atom. For Bohr had not only assumed that the atom consisted of particles moving through space and time, but also that the particles inside atoms were of the same kind as the electrons outside atoms.”

James Jeans (1877–1946) British mathematician and astronomer

Physics and Philosophy (1942)

“Memories were fine, but you couldn't touch them. They were never exactly as the moment had been, & they faded w/ time”

Cecelia Ahern (1981) Irish novelist

Variant: Memories were fine but you couldn't touch them, smell them or hold them. They were never exactly as the moment was, and they faded with time.

“Had I known that the Germans would not succeed in producing an atomic bomb, I would not have lifted a finger.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

Einstein discussing the letter he sent Roosevelt raising the possibility of atomic weapons. from "Atom: Einstein, the Man Who Started It All," Newsweek Magazine (10 March 1947).
1940s

“Atomic war is bad but you know what’s even worse? Having had enough atomic wars that you can rank them in terms of horribleness.”

James Nicoll (1961) Canadian fiction reviewer

Review of Voodoo Planet: Solar Queen, book 3 by Andre Norton http://jamesdavisnicoll.com/review/oh-andre-norton-no, 2015
2010s

“The air in a man's lungs 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 atoms, so that sooner or later every one of us breathes an atom that has been breathed before by anyone you can think of who has ever lived — Michelangelo or George Washington or Moses.”

Jacob Bronowski (1908–1974) Polish-born British mathematician

The Reader's Digest (1964) Vol. 84; also quoted in Structure and Plan (1974) by Glen A. Love, p. 154

“It was that sort of sleep in which you wake every hour and think to yourself that you have not been sleeping at all; you can remember dreams that are like reflections, daytime thinking slightly warped.”

Kim Stanley Robinson book Icehenge

Source: Icehenge

“You will say, 'How can chance assemble in one place all the things necessary to produce an oak tree?' My answer is that it would be no miracle if the matter thus arranged had not formed an oak. But it would have been a very great miracle if, once the matter was thus arranged, an oak had not been formed.”

Cyrano de Bergerac (1619–1655) French novelist, dramatist, scientist and duelist

The Other World (1657)
Context: You will say, 'How can chance assemble in one place all the things necessary to produce an oak tree?' My answer is that it would be no miracle if the matter thus arranged had not formed an oak. But it would have been a very great miracle if, once the matter was thus arranged, an oak had not been formed. A few less of some shapes, and it would have been an elm, a poplar, a willow, an elder, heather or moss. A little more of some other shapes and it might have been a sensitive plant, an oyster in its shell, a worm, a fly, a frog, a sparrow, an ape or a man.

“If, in some cataclysm, all of scientific knowledge were to be destroyed, and only one sentence passed on to the next generation of creatures, what statement would contain the most information in the fewest words? I believe it is the atomic hypothesis (or the atomic fact, or whatever you wish to call it) that all things are made of atoms — little particles that move around in perpetual motion, attracting each other when they are a little distance apart, but repelling upon being squeezed into one another. In that one sentence, you will see, there is an enormous amount of information about the world, if just a little imagination and thinking are applied.”

Richard Feynman (1918–1988) American theoretical physicist

volume I; lecture 1, "Atoms in Motion"; section 1-2, "Matter is made of atoms"; p. 1-2
The Feynman Lectures on Physics (1964)

“Before the quantum theory appeared, the principle of the uniformity of nature - that like causes produce like effects - had been accepted as a universal and indisputable fact of science. As soon as the atomicity of radiation became established, this principle had to be discarded.”

James Jeans (1877–1946) British mathematician and astronomer

Physics and Philosophy (1942)

“The dance of atoms, electrons and nuclei, which in all its fury is subject to God's eternal laws, has been entangled with”

Max Born (1882–1970) physicist

From the Postcrip to 'The restless universe' (1951), pp. 225-226
Physics in my generation (1956)
Context: The dance of atoms, electrons and nuclei, which in all its fury is subject to God's eternal laws, has been entangled with another restless Universe which may well be the Devil's: the human struggle for power and domination, which eventually becomes history. My optimistic enthusiasm about the disinterested search for truth has been severely shaken. I wonder at my simplemindedness when I re-read what I said on the modern fulfilment of the alchemists dream: "Now however, the motive is not the lust for gold, cloaked by the mystery of magic arts, but the scientists' pure curiosity. For it is clear from the beginning that we may not expect wealth too." Gold means power, power to rule and to have a big share in the riches of this world. Modern alchemy is even a short-cut to this end, it provides power directly; a power to dominate and to threaten and hurt on a scale never heard of before. And this power we have actually seen displayed in ruthless acts of warfare, in the devastation of whole cities and the destruction of their population.

“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.”

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Bill Bryson 112

Related quotes

Related topics