Quotes about oxygen (95 quotes) | Quotes of famous people

“Our strategy should be not only to confront empire, but to lay siege to it. To deprive it of oxygen. To shame it. To mock it. With our art, our music, our literature, our stubbornness, our joy, our brilliance, our sheer relentlessness – and our ability to tell our own stories. Stories that are different from the ones we’re being brainwashed to believe.”

Arundhati Roy (1961) Indian novelist, essayist

Source: An Ordinary Person's Guide to Empire (2005), p. 86
Source: War Talk

Art , Music , Literature , Joy

“And the ability of citizens to organize and advocate for change -- that's the oxygen upon which democracy depends.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2015, Remarks to the Kenyan People (July 2015)

Democracy , Change , Dependency

“When people talk about reincarnation, I always feel that if there is such a thing, this is definitely my first time, because I'm always amazed. I'm both amazed at how horrifically we can treat each other and all other living things, and also amazed at the wonder and the beauty. I'm like: 'Oh my God, look at that bird!' or 'Look at that flower!' literally every single day. I can't get over how people are putting so much energy and so many resources into going to Mars when everything we could ever dream of is on this planet, if we just take care of it. What do they have on Mars? They don't even have oxygen up there!”

Daryl Hannah (1960) actress

"'I'm a little bit of a nerd'", interview with The Guardian (7 June 2009) https://www.theguardian.com/film/2009/jun/07/interview-daryl-hannah.

God , People , Beauty , Dreams

“Effort is the oxygen for talent.”

P. L. Deshpande (1919–2000) Marathi writer, humourist, actor, dramatist

From his various literature
Source: These words are uttered by the lead character of his work with the same name - Sakharam Gatne.

Effort

“money is not everything but it ranks right up there with oxygen”

Zig Ziglar (1926–2012) American motivational speaker

Money

“Chemical signs ought to be letters, for the greater facility of writing, and not to disfigure a printed book … I shall take therefore for the chemical sign, the initial letter of the Latin name of each elementary substance: but as several have the same initial letter, I shall distinguish them in the following manner:— 1. In the class which I shall call metalloids, I shall employ the initial letter only, even when this letter is common to the metalloid and to some metal. 2. In the class of metals, I shall distinguish those that have the same initials with another metal, or a metalloid, by writing the first two letters of the word. 3. If the first two letters be common to two metals, I shall, in that case, add to the initial letter the first consonant which they have not in common: for example, S = sulphur, Si = silicium, St = stibium (antimony), Sn = stannum (tin), C = carbonicum, Co = colbaltum (colbalt), Cu = cuprum (copper), O = oxygen, Os = osmium, &c.”

Jöns Jacob Berzelius (1779–1848) Swedish chemist

Jöns Jacob Berzelius, Essay on the Cause of Chemical Proportions, and on some circumstances relating to them: together with a short and easy method of expressing them', Annals of Philosophy, 1814, 3,51-2.

Books

“We few, we happy few, we band of brothers — joined in the serious business of keeping our food, shelter, clothing and loved ones from combining with oxygen.”

Kurt Vonnegut book God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater

"Eliot Rosewater" to a group of volunteer firemen.
God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater (1965)

Love , Food , Business , Clothes

“Information is the oxygen of the modern age. It seeps through the walls topped by barbed wire, it wafts across the electrified borders. … The Goliath of totalitarianism will be brought down by the David of the microchip.”

Ronald Reagan (1911–2004) American politician, 40th president of the United States (in office from 1981 to 1989)

As quoted in The Guardian [London] (14 June 1989)
Post-presidency (1989–2004)

Age

“Yes, but water decomposed into its primitive elements… and decomposed doubtless, by electricity, which will then have become a powerful and manageable force, for all great discoveries, by some inexplicable law, appear to agree and become complete at the same time. Yes, my friends, I believe that water will one day be employed as fuel, that hydrogen and oxygen which constitute it, used singly or together, will furnish an inexhaustible source of heat and light, of an intensity of which coal is not capable. Some day the coalrooms of steamers and the tenders of locomotives will, instead of coal, be stored with these two condensed gases, which will burn in the furnaces with enormous calorific power. There is, therefore, nothing to fear. As long as the earth is inhabited it will supply the wants of its inhabitants, and there will be no want of either light or heat as long as the productions of the vegetable, mineral or animal kingdoms do not fail us. I believe, then, that when the deposits of coal are exhausted we shall heat and warm ourselves with water. Water will be the coal of the future!”

Jules Verne book The Mysterious Island

Part II, ch. XI
The Mysterious Island (1874)

Fear , Law , Light , Water

“The animals of the planet are in desperate peril… Without free animal life I believe we will lose the spiritual equivalent of oxygen.”

Alice Walker (1944) American author and activist

Life , Animals

“If you don't leave home you suffocate, if you go too far you lose oxygen.”

Vivian Gornick (1935) US author

The Situation and the Story: The Art of Personal Narrative

Home

“Self pity becomes your oxygen. But you learned to breathe it without a gasp. So, nobody even notices you're hurting.”

Paul Monette (1945–1995) American writer

Learning , Hurt

“Love’em or hate’em, by blood or by heart, family was a kind of oxygen. Necessary for the living.”

Jessica Bird (1969) U.S. novelist

Source: Lover at Last

Family , Heart

“Do you ever wonder if--well, if there are people living on the third planet?'
'The third planet is incapable of supporting life,' stated the husband patiently. 'Our scientists have said there's far too much oxygen in their atmosphere.”

Ray Bradbury book The Martian Chronicles

Source: The Martian Chronicles

Life , People , Support

“I feel a little dizzy," said Orion. "But also wonderfully elated. I feel that I am on the verge of finding a rhyme for the word."

"Oxygen deprivation," said Foaly. "Or maybe it's just him.”

Eoin Colfer (1965) Irish author of children's books

Source: The Atlantis Complex

Feeling

“You need to stop thinking with your head, Mud Boy, and start thinking with your heart.”

Artemis sighed. The heart was an organ for pumping oxygen-rich blood to the cells. It could no more think than an apple could tap-dance.”

Eoin Colfer (1965) Irish author of children's books

Boy , Thinking , Heart , Dance

“Love is not an equation… It is not a contract, and it's not a happy ending. It is the slate under the chalk and the ground buildings rise from and the oxygen in the air.”

Jodi Picoult (1966) Author

Source: Vanishing Acts

Love , Happiness

“Unfortunately it’s also true to say that good management is a bit like oxygen—it’s invisible and you don’t notice its presence until it’s gone, and then you’re sorry.”

Charles Stross book The Fuller Memorandum

Source: The Laundry Files, The Fuller Memorandum (2010), Chapter 2, “Pointing the Finger” (p. 32)

“I never knew there were this many stars."

"I can't see them," he told me. "I just see you."

"That's one of your cheesier lines," I told him.

"It's the altitude," he told me. "I don't have enough oxygen in my brain."

"I see.”

Ally Carter (1974) American writer

Source: United We Spy

Star

“I'm beginning to think I need you like I need oxygen”

Rachel Gibson (1961) American writer

Source: Not Another Bad Date

Thinking

“Love is not an equation, it is not a contract, and it is not a happy ending. Love is the slate under the chalk, the ground that buildings rise, and the oxygen in the air. It is the place you come back to, no matter where your headed”

Jodi Picoult (1966) Author

Love , Happiness

“It's an illusion I've noticed before-- words on a page are like oxygen to a petrol engine, firing up ghosts. It only lasts while the words are in your head. After you put down the paper or pen, the pistons fall lifeless again.”

Elizabeth Wein book Rose Under Fire

Source: Rose Under Fire

“The supposedly immaterial soul, we now know, can be bisected with a knife, altered by chemicals, started or stopped by electricity, and extinguished by a sharp blow or by insufficient oxygen.”

Steven Pinker book How the Mind Works

Source: How the Mind Works

Soul

“Dignity is as essential to human life as water, food, and oxygen. The stubborn retention of it, even in the face of extreme physical hardship, can hold a man's soul in his body long past the point at which the body should have surrendered it.”

Laura Hillenbrand book Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption

Source: Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption

Life , Food , Soul , Water

“At first it was for health and athletic performance but it also became about ethics and the environment. My strength increased. I put 20lbs on my dumbell benchpress (10lbs each arm) in only 2 weeks and my endurance improved. Running is much easier now. I have more energy and recovery is better too. The whole protein myth is complete nonsense. Plant-based foods have plenty. … As an athlete you want your endothelium, the inner lining of your arteries, to be as healthy as possible. It is responsible for nitric oxide production which transports oxygen to the muscles and dilates the arteries. More oxygen means better performance whether it be strength or endurance. Plant-based foods are inherently loaded with antioxidants too, which aid athletes in recovery. If someone wants to be the best athlete they can be they need to fuel their body with the best diet available and that is a whole food, plant-based diet.”

James Wilks (1978) English martial artist

“James Wilks,” interview with Great Vegan Athletes (2013) http://www.greatveganathletes.com/content/james-wilks.

Health , Food

“The guts of honey bee workers contain a distinctive community of bacterial species. They are microaerophilic or anaerobic, and were not clearly deliniated by earlier studies relying on laboratory culture of isolates under atmospheric oxygen levels. Recently, a more complete picture of the potential metabolism and functions of these bacteria have been possible, using genomic approaches based on metagenomic samples, as well as cultured isolates. Of these, most are host-restricted and are generally absent outside adult guts.”

Nancy A. Moran (1954) American biologist

[Current Opinion in Insect Science, 10, August 2015, 22–28, Genomics of the honey bee microbiome, 10.1016/j.cois.2015.04.003]

Communication , Study , Bee

“To me, music is oxygen and I know that someday even if I can't sing, I can always continue listening to it.”

Shreya Ghoshal (1984) Indian playback singer

Response when asked about her likes http://www.timesofindia.com/entertainment/hindi/music/news/I-like-my-father-being-the-boss-in-my-life-Shreya/movie-review/27854121.cms?prtpage=1

Music , Singing

“For a Westerner to trash Western culture is like criticizing our nitrogen/oxygen atmosphere on the grounds that it sometimes gets windy, and besides, Jupiter's is much prettier. You may not realize its advantages until you're trying to breathe liquid methane.”

Neal Stephenson (1959) American science fiction writer

Wired 2.02: In the Kindom of Mao Bell http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/2.02/mao.bell.html?pg=2&topic=&topic_set=

“A pure elastic fluid is one the constituent particles of which are all alike, or in no way distinguishable. Steam, or aqueous vapour, hydrogenous gas, oxygenous gas… and several others are of this kind. …Whatever …may be the shape or figure of the solid atom abstractedly, when surrounded by such an atmosphere it must be globular; but as all the globules in any small given volume are subject to the same pressure, they must be equal in bulk, and will therefore be arranged in horizontal strata, like a pile of shot.”

John Dalton book A New System of Chemical Philosophy

Source: A New System of Chemical Philosophy (1808), Ch. II. On the Constitution of Bodies, Sect. 1. On the Constitution of Pure Elastic Fluids

Way

“In 1913, Nobel price Otto Heinrich Warburg was the first to observe that cancer can not develop in a rich stace full of oxygen. Nobel price Roy Walford also observed that caloric restriction, could increase longevity and health.”

Jean-Pierre Willem (1938) French humanitarian

Dès 1913, le prix Nobel Otto Heinrich Warburg fut le premier à observer et expliquer que le cancer ne peut se développer dans un milieu riche en oxygène, donc acide. Le prix Nobel Roy Walford observa également que les restrictions caloriques pouvaient augmenter la longevité et la santé.
Une technique de jeûne annuel: L'ACIDOSE, prévention n°1 des maladies dégénératives, Jean-Pierre Willem (Paris, La vie naturelle, 1990), n°56.

Health

“Some have argued that the seeds to most fruit should not be eaten since they contain cyanide. It is true that many seeds contain cyanide, but that does not mean they cannot be eaten. Water has hydrogen and oxygen both dangerous around fires! Yet water is used to put fires out! The cyanide in seeds is locked into a molecule that renders it harmless to all human cells except cancer cells. There are scores of Web sites touting the eating of seeds or the laetrile (B-17) derivative to treat and cure cancer. Could it be that God put all we need in the original foods to prevent all diseases?”

Kent Hovind (1953) American young Earth creationist

Source: What On Earth Is About To Happen… For Heaven’s Sake? (2013), p. 48

God , Disease , Food , Water

“Just like when Governor Perry came in, there would be a big splash, you know, with the establishment media. So he'll get a lot of attention, suck up a lot of the oxygen for a while, and at the same time, you still see 'black walnut' moving up the charts.”

Herman Cain (1945) American writer, businessman and activist

Time

“What takes place within the structure of the leaf, then, with the aid of the wonderful green workmen, is this: A certain number of molecules of water, brought to the leaf from root and stem, are taken in hand and compounded with a certain number of molecules of carbon extracted from the air that has been brought into the leaf laboratory through its mouths or stomata from the outside atmosphere.
When the compound has been effected, we still have the atoms of hydrogen and oxygen that composed the water molecules and the atoms of carbon, but they are so marvelously put together that they no longer constitute the liquid water or the gas in which the carbon was imported. They now constitute an altogether new substance which is termed sugar.
Thus only three elements are dealt with and these very familiar ones. It would seem as if almost any chemist should be able to manage a simple combination like that. But… no human chemist knows how to manage it. There are forces to be invoked in effecting that combination of which no chemist has any knowledge.
Only the chlorophyll grains in the plant leaf have learned the secret, and up to the present they have kept their secret well.”

Luther Burbank (1849–1926) American botanist, horticulturist and pioneer in agricultural science

How Plants are Trained to Work for Man (1921) Vol. 5 Gardening

Secret , Knowledge , Learning , Water

“Most of the oxygen we breathe is made by ocean plankton. And when animals left the seas in which life arose, they took seawater with them, in their bodies — an internal environment crucial for cellular survival. We are, in a sense, soft vessels of seawater.”

Carl Safina (1955) American biologist

Source: [A sea ethic: floating the Ark, Blue Ocean Institute, 2005, http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.495.177&rep=rep1&type=pdf]

Life , Sense , Animals , Sea

“Mars is essentially in the same orbit. … Mars is somewhat the same distance from the Sun, which is very important. We have seen pictures where there are canals, we believe, and water. If there is water, that means there is oxygen. If oxygen, that means we can breathe.”

Dan Quayle (1947) American politician, lawyer

Press comment on Mars exploration http://bobpark.physics.umd.edu/WN89/wn090189.html (11 August 1989), televised on CNN, and referenced in "A Quayle Vision of Mars" in The Washington Post (1 September 1989)

Water , Sun

“Fire is the reuniting of matter with oxygen. If one bears that in mind, every blaze may be seen as a reunion, an occasion of chemical joy.”

Tom Robbins Even Cowgirls Get the Blues

Even Cowgirls Get the Blues (1976)

Joy

“Sangamon’s Principle,” I said. “The simpler the molecule, the better the drug. So the best drug is oxygen. Only two atoms. The second-best, nitrous oxide—a mere three atoms. The third-best, ethanol—nine. Past that, you’re talking lots of atoms.”
“So?”
“Atoms are like people. Get lots of them together, never know what they’ll do.”

Neal Stephenson book Zodiac

Source: Zodiac (1988), Chapter 1

People , Past

“You will find that for a smoking flax there is no specific like heaven's oxygen; for a faint and flickering piety there is no cure comparable to the one without which all our own exertions are but an effort to light a lamp in a vacuum — the breath of the Holy Spirit.”

James Hamilton (1814–1867) Scottish minister and a prolific author of religious tracts

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 321.

Effort , Light

“There’s no objective evidence for an afterlife, and anecdotal reports of heaven cannot be distinguished from wishful thinking, self-delusion, and the effects of oxygen loss on the brain.”

James K. Morrow (1947) (1947-) science fiction author

City of Truth as reprinted in Nebula Awards 28, p. 257
Short fiction

Thinking , Loss

“The free exchange of opinion and information is the very lifeblood of the society to which you owe everything you have. It's the oxygen that gives us clarity and strength. Restricting it is like closing down synapses in the collective brain. It's an act of sabotage and nobody has the right to do it any more than they have the right to arbitrarily ration water or air. No judge, no politician, no police officer and certainly no braying mob of sanctimonious, privileged, middle-class, left-wing, students who think they know best for everyone.”

Pat Condell (1949) Stand-up comedian, writer, and Internet personality

"A word to left-wing students" (11 July 11 2013) https://youtube.com/watch?v=85q6BOnwIAQ
2013

Thinking , Water

“As a result, there is an electrostatic attraction between the oxygen atom of one water molecule and the hydrogen of another (Fig. 2-lb), called a hydrogen bond.”

Albert L. Lehninger (1917–1986) American biochemist

Principles of Biochemistry, Ch. 2 : Water

Water

“If, then, faith so evidently surrounds us, why should it be so offensive? It is simply because faith is as essential to the spiritual realm as oxygen is to the natural realm. The professing atheist thinks that if he can get rid of any thought of faith he can get rid of Christianity. In trying to do so, he saws through the branch he is sitting on. His own faith in the erroneous information he has makes him think he is atheistic in his beliefs.”

Ray Comfort (1949) New Zealand-born Christian minister and evangelist

God doesn't believe in atheists (2002)

Faith , Nature , Thinking

“"Hair loss and retrieval" (Translation of "Pérdida y recuperación del pelo")

To combat pragmatism and the horrible tendency to achieve useful purposes, my elder cousin proposes the procedure of pulling out a nice hair from the head, knotting it in the middle and droping it gently down the hole in the sink. If the hair gets caught in the grid that usually fills in these holes, it will just take to open the tap a little to lose sight of it.

Without wasting an instant, must start the hair recovery task. The first operation is reduced to dismantling the siphon from the sink to see if the hair has become hooked in any of the rugosities of the drain. If it is not found, it is necessary to expose the section of pipe that goes from the siphon to the main drainage pipe. It is certain that in this part will appear many hairs and we will have to count on the help of the rest of the family to examine them one by one in search of the knot. If it does not appear, the interesting problem of breaking the pipe down to the ground floor will arise, but this means a greater effort, because for eight or ten years we will have to work in a ministry or trading house to collect enough money to buy the four departments located under the one of my elder cousin, all that with the extraordinary disadvantage of what while working during those eight or ten years, the distressing feeling that the hair is no longer in the pipes anymore can not be avoided and that only by a remote chance remains hooked on some rusty spout of the drain.

The day will come when we can break the pipes of all the departments, and for months to come we will live surrounded by basins and other containers full of wet hairs, as well as of assistants and beggars whom we will generously pay to search, assort, and bring us the possible hairs in order to achieve the desired certainty. If the hair does not appear, we will enter in a much more vague and complicated stage, because the next section takes us to the city's main sewers. After buying a special outfit, we will learn to slip through the sewers at late night hours, armed with a powerful flashlight and an oxygen mask, and explore the smaller and larger galleries, assisted if possible by individuals of the underworld, with whom we will have established a relationship and to whom we will have to give much of the money that we earn in a ministry or a trading house.

Very often we will have the impression of having reached the end of the task, because we will find (or they will bring us) similar hairs of the one we seek; but since it is not known of any case where a hair has a knot in the middle without human hand intervention, we will almost always end up with the knot in question being a mere thickening of the caliber of the hair (although we do not know of any similar case) or a deposit of some silicate or any oxide produced by a long stay against a wet surface. It is probable that we will advance in this way through various sections of major and minor pipes, until we reach that place where no one will decide to penetrate: the main drain heading in the direction of the river, the torrential meeting of detritus in which no money, no boat, no bribe will allow us to continue the search.

But before that, and perhaps much earlier, for example a few centimeters from the mouth of the sink, at the height of the apartment on the second floor, or in the first underground pipe, we may happen to find the hair. It is enough to think of the joy that this would cause us, in the astonished calculation of the efforts saved by pure good luck, to choose, to demand practically a similar task, that every conscious teacher should advise to its students from the earliest childhood, instead of drying their souls with the rule of cross-multiplication or the sorrows of Cancha Rayada.”

Julio Cortázar (1914–1984) Argentinian writer

Historias de Cronopios y de Famas (1962)

Money , Family , Way , Feeling

“When you have a fire in an aircraft, there's no place to go, exactly, there's no — and you can't find any oxygen from outside the aircraft to get in the aircraft, because the windows don't open. I don't know why they don't do that. It's a real problem. So it's very dangerous….”

Mitt Romney (1947) American businessman and politician

Fundraiser, Beverly Hills, , quoted in * 2012-09-24
Romney mocked for comment about jet windows
Xiaonan
Wang
Los Angeles Times
http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-pn-romney-jet-windows-20120924,0,3749461.story
2012-09-25
2012

Problem

“As a little child, I remember having conflicts with other people over religion at 5-years-old, at 8-years-old, and without realising it. Certainly, not realising my whole life would be this whole argument. I would ask simple questions to my babysitter when I was a little boy, like, “How does Jesus turn water into wine? I know water is H2O. I know that wine is alcohol and fruit juice, and I don’t know what the chemical components of that are.” But as it turned out, when I grew up I looked it up. It is only the difference of a carbon atom. The molecules are much more complex. But they involve oxygen, hydrogen, and some additional carbons. That’s it. But all I knew at the time, water is H2O, and alcohol and fruit juice are something else. How does Jesus turn water from H2O into H2O and whatever else? I thought someone would give me some kind of intelligible answer. Like how Jesus does that, whether he uses telekinesis or whatever he does… But they don’t come up with explanations like that, they didn’t want explanations. They didn’t even want to believe people had explanations. When I was growing up, I found believers not only hated accurate scientific answers, but they hated any answer that sounded scientific. It was a funny thing. I was told all of the time that “sceptics were cynics” because we miss out on the big picture that only the believers can see.”

Aron Ra (1962) Aron Ra is an atheist activist and the host of the Ra-Men Podcast

Exclusive Interview with Aron Ra – Public Speaker, Atheist Vlogger, and Activist https://conatusnews.com/interview-aron-ra-past-president-atheist-alliance-america/, Conatus News (May 17, 2017)

Life , Hate , People , Alcohol

“You can know almost anything about G-d, provided you put the right questions to Him. You have to learn how to put the questions, and they have to be accurate and airtight. […] [M]y father, for instance, doesn't know that two atoms of hydrogen bind with one atom of oxygen to form a water molecule. Yet it's G-d's truth, and an important one. You don't know it […] you believe it because you read it somewhere, or a teacher told you. I know it. I've put the question, and He answered, straight out. G-d will answer a high school boy. He asks only that you use common sense, pay very close attention to Him, not be sloppy, and count and measure correctly. G-d ignores sloppy questions. Sloppiness is the opposite of G-dliness. G-d is exact. He is marvelously, purely exact. Theology is all slop. Moses gave the best answers you could get, three thousand years ago, and he was no theologian.”

Herman Wouk (1915–2019) Pulitzer Prize-winning American author whose novels include The Caine Mutiny, The Winds of War and War and …

"Inside, Outside", p. 567 of the hardcover edition. The quote is fictional physicist Mark Herz answering the protagonist's question "What can you know about G-d? You either believe or you don't."

Truth , School , Quotes , Boy

“Look what I found; a litter version of the Internet! This used to be something that could convert carbon dioxide to oxygen using only sunlight, water, and a few nutrients. But now it's way cooler; it has two functions. You can either put little words on it, or crumple it up into a tiny ball and throw it!”

Ze Frank (1972) American online performance artist

http://www.zefrank.com/theshow/archives/2007/04/best_of_050806.html
"The Show" (www.zefrank.com/theshow/)

Way , Water

“I had to wear an oxygen mask both in the water and on land because of the carbon monoxide. I fainted four times during the first day of filming. We were shooting the scene in which Godzilla emerges from the water as he approaches Hong Kong. I wasn't warned about the carbon monoxide, so I wasn't wearing an oxygen mask. We were shooting in water, so nobody could just run up to me when they saw me acting strangely. We were filming a long shot, so nobody was very close to me. The members of the staff didn't realize I'd fainted that first time until they started opening up the costume so I could get out.”

Kenpachiro Satsuma (1947) Japanese actor

As quoted by David Milner, "Kenpachiro Satsuma Interview III" http://www.davmil.org/www.kaijuconversations.com/satsum3.htm, Kaiju Conversations (December 1995)

Water , Time

“I would teach the world how the Greeks proved, more than 2,000 years ago, that there are infinitely many prime numbers. In my mind, this discovery is the beginning of mathematics – when humankind realised that, by pure thought alone, it could prove eternal truths of the universe.
Prime numbers are the indivisible numbers, numbers that can be divided only by themselves and one. They are the most important numbers in mathematics, because every number is built by multiplying prime numbers together – for example, 60 = 2 x 2 x 3 x 5. They are like the atoms of arithmetic, the hydrogen and oxygen of the world of numbers.”

Marcus du Sautoy (1965) British professor of mathematics

In "Life lessons" http://www.theguardian.com/science/2005/apr/07/science.highereducation?fb_ref=desktop The Guardian (7 April 2005)

Truth , World , Mathematics , Universe

“Which do you think came first—the blood or the heart—and why? Did the heart in all these different species of fish, reptiles, birds, and mammals evolve before there were blood vessels throughout their bodies? When did the blood evolve? Was it before or after the vessels evolved? If it was before, what was it that carried blood to the heart, if there were no vessels? Did the heart beat before the blood evolved? Why was it beating if there was no blood to pump? If it wasn’t beating, why did it start when it had no awareness of blood? If the blood vessels evolved before there was blood, why did they evolve if there was no such thing as blood? And if the blood evolved before the heart evolved, what was it that caused it to circulate around the body? The marvelous human body (and the bodies of all the other creatures) consists of so many amazingly interdependent parts: a heart, lungs (to oxygenate the blood), kidneys (to filter wastes from the blood), blood vessels, arteries, blood, skin (to protect it all), etc. The intricate codependence of just the respiratory system and the circulatory system—not to mention all the other bodily systems—is difficult to explain.”

Ray Comfort (1949) New Zealand-born Christian minister and evangelist

The Origin of Species: 150th Anniversary Edition (2009)

Bird , Thinking , Fish , Heart

“If you look at a tree and think of it as a design assignment, it would be like asking you to make something that makes oxygen, sequesters carbon, fixes nitrogen, distills water, provides habitat for hundreds of species, accrues solar energy's fuel, makes complex sugars and food, changes colors with the seasons, creates microclimates, and self-replicates.”

William McDonough (1951) American architect

"William McDonough: Godfather of Green", WNYC Studio 360 (18 March 2008).

Food , Color , Thinking , Tree

“I developed The Great Teacher theory late in my freshman year. It was a cornerstone of the theory that great teachers had great personalities and that the greatest teachers had outrageous personalities. I did not like decorum or rectitude in a classroom; I preferred a highly oxygenated atmosphere, a climate of intemperance, rhetoric, and feverish melodrama. And I wanted my teachers to make me smart. A great teacher is my adversary, my conqueror, commissioned to chastise me. He leaves me tame and grateful for the new language he has purloined from other kings whose granaries are filled and whose libraries are famous. He tells me that teaching is the art of theft; knowing what to steal and from whom. Bad teachers do not touch me; the great ones never leave me. They ride with me during all my days, and I pass on to others what they have imparted to me. I exchange their handy gifts with strangers on trains, and I pretend the gifts are mine. I steal from the great teachers. And the truly wonderful thing about them is that they would applaud my theft, laugh at the thought of it, realizing that they had taught me their larcenous skills well.”

Pat Conroy The Lords of Discipline

Source: The Lords of Discipline (1980), p. 271

Art , Teachers , Personality , Training

“Oxygen is an accident. Breath is intentional.”

Erwan Le Corre (1971)

“The oxygen crisis that began only two billion years ago prompted the evolution of respiring bacteria. These microbes that used oxygen to derive biochemical energy more efficiently than ever before eventually took over most of the world. Some of the oxygen-breathing bacteria became symbiotic, merging with different (oxygen-eschewing) bacteria to form nucleated cells, which, after becoming sexual, evolved into fungi, plants, and animals.”

Lynn Margulis (1938–2011) American evolutionary biologist

with Dorion Sagan, Dazzle Gradually: Reflections on the Nature of Nature (2007).

World , Animals

“There's an ideological fervor about this prosecution that's almost religious in its intensity, because let's be clear, this is a heresy trial by any other name. They can't refute Mr. Wilders' statements, so instead they've resorted to the kind of cheap legal stunt we'd expect from the likes of Mugabe to shut their opponent up. They've accused him of being divisive and inflammatory, and yes, sometimes the truth can be divisive and inflammatory if it has been suppressed for long enough and has become sufficiently taboo, as it clearly has in the Netherlands, because according to the prosecution it doesn't even matter that what he says is true; what matters is that it's illegal. Well, when the truth is against the law, then there's something seriously wrong with the law, because when the truth is no defence, there is no defence, and the law has no anchor, so it will drift wherever the wind of political expedience blows, and this week it blew straight into a crooked courtroom in Amsterdam, where justice will now be made to fight for its life, starved of the oxygen of truth that gives it life.”

Pat Condell (1949) Stand-up comedian, writer, and Internet personality

On the trial of Geert Wilders, "The crooked judges of Amsterdam" (5 February 2010) http://youtube.com/watch?v=96ZUZ9CPZII
2010

Life , Truth , Justice , Law

“We must try to find ways to starve the terrorist and the hijacker of the oxygen of publicity on which they depend.”

Margaret Thatcher (1925–2013) British stateswoman and politician

Speech to the American Bar Association (15 July 1985) http://www.margaretthatcher.org/speeches/displaydocument.asp?docid=106096.
See Linda Smith for an amusing variant.
Second term as Prime Minister

Way , Dependency

“The skein of human continuity must often become this tenuous across the centuries (hanging by a thread, in the old cliché), but the circle remains unbroken if I can touch the ink of Lavoisier's own name, written by his own hand. A candle of light, nurtured by the oxygen of his greatest discovery, never burns out if we cherish the intellectual heritage of such unfractured filiation across the ages. We may also wish to contemplate the genuine physical thread of nucleic acid that ties each of us to the common bacterial ancestor of all living creatures, born on Lavoisier's ancienne terre more than 3.5 billion years ago—and never since disrupted, not for one moment, not for one generation. Such a legacy must be worth preserving from all the guillotines of our folly.”

Stephen Jay Gould book The Lying Stones of Marrakech

"The Proof of Lavoisier's Plates", p. 114
The Lying Stones of Marrakech (2001)

Age , Light

“It is the residue of animal and vegetable putrefaction, and is a black body; when dry it is pulverulent, and when wet has a soft, greasy feel… It is the produce of organic power—a compound of carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, and oxygen, such as cannot be chemically composed.”

Albrecht Thaer (1752–1828) German agronomist and an avid supporter of the humus theory for plant nutrition

p. 336 http://books.google.com/books?id=zAhJAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA336; Cited in: Edmund Ruffin An Essay on Calcareous Manures, Volume 1. J.W. Randolph, 1852. p. 85.
Ruffin summarizes:
"Humus" is the term used by this author for the decomposed vegetable and other organic matter which is more or less mixed with all surface soil, and which gives to soil all its fertility, and furnishes all the food of plants.
The Principles of Agriculture, 1844, Section III: Agronomy

Feeling , Animals

“What I am trying to do is to present a unified scientific view of life; that is, a view integrating life's biological, cognitive, and social dimensions. I have had many discussions with social scientists, cognitive scientists, physicists and biologist who question that task, who said that this would not be possible. They ask, why do I believe that I can do that? My belief is based largely on our knowledge of evolution. When you study evolution, you see that there was, first of all, evolution before the appearance of life, there was a molecular type of evolution where structures of greater and greater complexity evolved out of simple molecules. Biochemist who study that have made tremendous progress in understanding that process of molecular evolution. Then we had the appearance of the first cell which was a bacterium. Bacteria evolved for about 2 billion years and in doing so invented, if you want to use the term, or created most of the life processes that we know today. Biochemical processes like fermentation, oxygen breathing, photosynthesis, also rapid motion, were developed by bacteria in evolution. And what happened then was that bacteria combined with one another to produce larger cells — the so-called eukaryotic cells, which have a nucleus, chromosomes, organelles, and so on. This symbiosis that led to new forms is called symbiogenesis.”

Fritjof Capra (1939) American physicist

Capra (2007) in: Francis Pisani " An Interview with Fritjof Capra http://ijoc.org/ojs/index.php/ijoc/article/view/69/25" in: International Journal of Communication Vol 1 (2007).

Life , Understanding , Question , Knowledge

“By the door, a large red object with a mirror on the upper part of its front. Installed last fall. Japanese. On a plate at the side: Mitzuyama Corp., Osaka. Shaped like a weighing machine. Stand here and insert 25c. Do not smoke while using. Place mouth and nose to soft black flexible mask. Like an obscene animal’s kiss.
Usually he laughed at it because up here in the mountains the air was never so bad you needed to tank up on oxygen to make the next block. On the other hand some people did say it was a hell of a good cure for a hangover...”

John Brunner book The Sheep Look Up

December “IT’S A GAS”
The Sheep Look Up (1972)

People , Mountain , Hell , Kiss

“While information is the oxygen of the modern age, disinformation is the carbon monoxide that can poison generations.”

Newton Lee American computer scientist

Counterterrorism and Cybersecurity: Total Information Awareness (2nd Edition), 2015

Age

“The fault is all ours. We have become overwhelming. About one in twenty of all the people who have ever existed is alive today, compared to just one in a thousand of other species. As a result we are depleting the earth.
But even now the question is still asked: Does it really matter? So we lose a few cute mammals, and a lot of bugs nobody ever heard of. So what? We’re still here.
Yes, we are. But the ecosystem is like a vast life-support machine. It is built on the interaction of species on all scales of life, from the humblest fungi filaments that sustain the roots of plants to the tremendous global cycles of water, oxygen, and carbon dioxide. Darwin’s entangled bank, indeed. How does the machine stay stable? We don’t know. Which are its most important components? We don’t know. How much of it can we take out safely? We don’t know that either. Even if we could identify and save the species that are critical for our survival, we wouldn’t know which species they depend on in turn. But if we keep on our present course, we will soon find out the limits of robustness.
I may be biased, but I believe it will matter a great deal if we were to die by our own foolishness. Because we bring to the world something that no other creature in all its long history has had, and that is conscious purpose. We can think our way out of this.
So my question is—consciously, purposefully, what are we going to do?”

Stephen Baxter book Evolution

Source: Evolution (2002), Chapter 16 “An Entangled Bank” section I (pp. 509-510)

Life , People , World , Way

“Dinosaurs are interesting, or confusing, to scientists, I should say, because they have very small nostrils. And small lungs. So they wonder how on earth did they breathe? You know, their lungs are too small, they've got this 80 foot-long body, with tiny nostrils and tiny lungs. Well, today, they probably couldn't survive in our environment, but I think before the flood came, in the days of Noah, the earth had double the atmospheric pressure, and there are several reasons for all of this, and 30% oxygen. And under those conditions the people would certainly live longer, and be healthier.”

Kent Hovind (1953) American young Earth creationist

Coast-to-Coast AM interview (August 2-3, 2000)

People , Thinking

“I see great things in baseball, It will take our people out-of-doors, fill them with oxygen, give them a larger physical stoicism, tend to relieve us from being a nervous, dyspeptic set, repair those losses and be a blessing to us.”

Walt Whitman (1819–1892) American poet, essayist and journalist

This has been widely attributed to Whitman, and no one else, but without definite source. It has sometimes been cited as being from the Brooklyn Daily Eagle (sometimes with a date of 23 July 1846), where Whitman had been an editor, but its presence on that date is not apparent in the online historical archives http://www.brooklynpubliclibrary.org/eagle/ of that publication.
Brian Cronin, in "Did 'Bull Durham' misquote Walt Whitman on baseball?" http://www.latimes.com/sports/sportsnow/la-sp-sn-bull-durham-baseball-20120328,0,5200453.story, Los Angeles Times (28 March 2012), suggests that this is (loosely) paraphrased from a remark of September 1888 reported in Horace L. Traubel, With Walt Whitman in Camden, Vol. 2:
I like your interest in sports ball, chiefest of all base-ball particularly: base-ball is our game: the American game: I connect it with our national character. Sports take people out of doors, get them filled with oxygen generate some of the brutal customs (so-called brutal customs) which, after all, tend to habituate people to a necessary physical stoicism. We are some ways a dyspeptic, nervous set: anything which will repair such losses may be regarded as a blessing to the race. We want to go out and howl, swear, run, jump, wrestle, even fight, if only by so doing we may improve the guts of the people: the guts, vile as guts are, divine as guts are!
"Sports for a Dyspeptic Race", Intimate With Walt: Whitmans Conversataions With Horace Traubel, p. 261 https://books.google.com/books?id=_Rp_4VHeQkAC&printsec=frontcover&dq=With+Walt+Whitman+in+Camden&hl=en&sa=X&ei=dqMtVfHQLcODsAWM-ICIDQ&ved=0CEUQ6AEwBQ#v=onepage&q=base-ball&f=false
Disputed

People , Loss

“On commercial airlines, at takeoff the flight attendants instruct passengers in the use of oxygen masks, reminding them to secure their own masks before assisting others. In the same way, to be effective spiritual warriors we must protect ourselves first. Otherwise we are of no use to anyone. The greatest protection of all comes from our unconditional, unmotivated, uninterrupted devotional service. Such service opens us up to a flow of divine love and protection in all circumstances.”

Bhakti Tirtha Swami (1950–2005) American Hindu writer

Source: Books, Spiritual Warrior, Volume III: Solace for the Heart in Difficult Times (Hari-Nama Press, 2000), Chapter 8 - How To Strengthen Ourselves

Love , Way

“Why does everybody agree that atmospheric oxygen… comes from life, but no one speaks about the other gases coming from life?”

Lynn Margulis (1938–2011) American evolutionary biologist

as quoted by Andre Khalil in "As Above, So Below," Lynn Margulis: The Life and Legacy of a Scientific Rebel ed. Dorion Sagan (2012).

Life

“This statement appears to us to be conclusive with respect to the insufficiency of the undulatory theory, in its present state, for explaining all the phenomena of light. But we are not therefore by any means persuaded of the perfect sufficiency of the projectile system: and all the satisfaction that we have derived from an attentive consideration of the accumulated evidence, which has been brought forward, within the last ten years, on both sides of the question, is that of being convinced that much more evidence is still wanting before it can be positively decided. In the progress of scientific investigation, we must frequently travel by rugged paths, and through valleys as well as over mountains. Doubt must necessarily succeed often to apparent certainty, and must again give place to a certainty of a higher order; such is the imperfection of our faculties, that the descent from conviction to hesitation is not uncommonly as salutary, as the more agreeable elevation from uncertainty to demonstration. An example of such alternations may easily be adduced from the history of chemistry. How universally had phlogiston once expelled the aërial acid of Hooke and Mayow. How much more completely had phlogiston given way to oxygen! And how much have some of our best chemists been lately inclined to restore the same phlogiston to its lost honours! although now again they are beginning to apprehend that they have already done too much in its favour. In the mean time, the true science of chemistry, as the most positive dogmatist will not hesitate to allow, has been very rapidly advancing towards ultimate perfection.”

Thomas Young (scientist) (1773–1829) English polymath

Miscellaneous Works: Scientific Memoirs (1855) Vol. 1 https://books.google.com/books?id=-XAXAQAAMAAJ, ed. George Peacock & John Leitch, p. 249

Way , Travel , History , Mountain

“Without clouds we wouldn't have rain. Without rain there is no water, no crops and no food for you and me. Humans would not exist without the sun, heat, water and oxygen from plants.”

Bill Nye (1955) American science educator, comedian, television host, actor, writer, scientist and former mechanical engineer

[NewsBank, 03I, Science Guy Wants You to Ask, 'Why?', The Columbus Dispatch, Ohio, October 24, 2001, Connie A. Higgins]

Food , Water , Sun

“The oxygen caused us immediate physical dependence beause our mother used it during pregnancy. The oxygen-dependents hallucinate obscurely through the mirror, who do not need the material anymore, they see face-to-face. (Source)”

Róbert Puzsér (1974) hungarian publicist

Quotes from him, Source

Dependency

“I'm sipping on an oxygen cocktail with an ambulance chaser.”

Tod A (1965) American musician

"Car Crash Collaborator", Psychopharmacology (July 10, 2001).
Lyrics, Firewater

“I have no ego investment in being on the air. I don't knock others for whom that kind of attention is like oxygen, but I don't miss anything about it.”

Hugh Downs (1921) American broadcaster

Attributed

“We need mandatory national service so we will all take part in performing the collective tasks we know are ours. We need mandatory national service because duty and honor are as necessary to us as oxygen and water. That's what I was trying to tell the Army in my application to the JAG corps at the age of 52. And that's what the radical middle needs to tell the American people.”

Mark Satin (1946) American political theorist, author, and newsletter publisher

Source: Radical Middle (2004), Chapter 12, "Bring Back the Draft, for Everyone This Time," p. 133.

People , Age , Water , Parting

“Usage is like oxygen for ideas.”

Matt Mullenweg (1984) American entrepreneur

Ma.tt http://ma.tt/2010/11/one-point-oh/, 1.0 is the Loneliest Number, November 2010

Idea

“Another panellist (Clive Anderson) suggested, "Don't give him the oxygen of publicity". "I'm not that happy with him having the oxygen of oxygen, actually," Linda replied.”

Linda Smith (1958–2006) comedian

A Brief History of Timewasting, Room 101, The News Quiz

Happiness

“Performing, for me, is like oxygen. Performing, for me, is like the only thing that is a constant in my life, because you're in all different places doing all different things, but when I get up on stage, that's where I know exactly what to do, that's where I own it.”

Skye Sweetnam (1988) Canadian singer-songwriter

Life

“Hidden in the rainforests, deserts, and mountains of Latin America and the Caribbean lay the keys to reversing the impact of global climate change. The region claims the world’s largest single-source of oxygen, most diverse species of flora and fauna, and several Natural Wonders of the World that need our help. The next great challenge for our generation is to join together to save these precious resources that are rapidly disappearing due to the effects of rising sea levels and more extreme weather patterns.”

Geovanny Vicente (1986) Political Strategist, lawyer, international consultant, columnist and university professor

World , Mountain , Nature , Change

“I very nearly died. Of course, everyone thought I was acting, even the person doing the strangling. But actually I was dying. Luckily someone noticed the froth coming out of my mouth and knew something was wrong. I wasn't that spooked by the incident. But when they told me I had been out for a while, I wanted to make sure I wouldn't have any long term damage because I didn't know how long the oxygen had been cut off to my brain. But I was fine apart from a couple of rope burns. That's what happens when you take art to extremes.”

Hugo Weaving (1960) Nigerian born British-Australian actor

On losing consciousness in August 2000, during a performance of the Sydney Theatre Company's The White Devil by John Webster. The Sunday Telegraph (December 2002)

Art , Personality

“A spectacular anomaly came up with the hydrides of the nonmetals—an ugly bunch, about as inimical to life as one could get. Arsenic and antimony hydrides were very poisonous and smelly; silicon and phosphorous hydrides were spontaneously inflammable. I had made in my lab the hydrides of sulfur (H2S), selenium (H2Se), and tellurium (H2Te), all Group VI elements, all dangerous and vile-smelling gases. The hydride of oxygen, the first Group VI element, one might predict by analogy, would be a foul-smelling, poisonous, inflammable gas, too, condensing to a nasty liquid around −100°C. And instead it was water, H2O—stable, potable, odorless, benign, and with a host of special, indeed unique properties (its expansion when frozen, its great heat capacity, its capacity as an ionizing solvent, etc.) which made it indispensable to our watery planet, indispensable to life itself. What made it such an anomaly? […]”

Oliver Sacks book Uncle Tungsten

This question, I found, had only been resolved recently, in the 1930s, with Linus Pauling's delineation of the hydrogen bond.
Source: Uncle Tungsten (2001), pp. 204–205

Life , Question , Water

“Saving Silverman is so bad in so many different ways that perhaps you should see it, as an example of the lowest slopes of the bell-shaped curve. This is the kind of movie that gives even its defenders fits of desperation. Consider my friend James Berardinelli, the best of the Web-based critics. No doubt 10 days of oxygen deprivation at the Sundance Film Festival helped inspire his three-star review, in which he reports optimistically, "Saving Silverman" has its share of pratfalls and slapstick moments, but there's almost no flatulence." Here's a critical rule of thumb: You know you're in trouble when you're reduced to praising a movie for its absence of fart jokes, and have to add "almost"… as for Neil Diamond, Saving Silverman is his first appearance in a fiction film since The Jazz Singer, and one can only marvel that he waited 20 years to appear in a second film, and found one even worse than his first one.”

Roger Ebert (1942–2013) American film critic, author, journalist, and TV presenter

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/saving-silverman-2001 of Saving Silverman (9 February 2001)
Reviews, Half-star reviews

Way , Star , Appearance , Waiting

“He was waiting to choke you on a marble, to smother you with a dry-cleaning bag, to sizzle you into eternity with a fast and lethal boogie of electricity- Available At Your Nearest Switch plate Or Vacant Light Socket Right Now. There was death in a quarter bag of peanuts, an aspirated piece of steak, the next pack of cigarettes. He was around all the time, he monitored all the checkpoints between the mortal and the eternal. Dirty needles, poison beetles, downed live wires, forest fires. Whirling roller skates that shot nerdy little kids into busy intersections. When you got into the bathtub to take a shower, Oz got right in there too- Shower With A Friend. When you got on an airplane, Oz took your boarding pass. He was in the water you drank, the food you ate. Who's out there? you howled in the dark when you were all frightened and all alone, and it was his answer that came back: Don't be afraid, it's just me. Hi, howaya? You got cancer of the bowel, what a bummer, so solly, Cholly! Septicemia! Leukemia! Atherosclerosis! Coronary thrombosis! Encephalitis! Osteomyelitis! Hey-ho, let's go! Junkie in a doorway with a knife. Phone call in the middle of the night. Blood cooking in battery acid on some exit ramp in North Carolina. Big handfuls of pills, munch em up. That peculiar cast of the fingernails following asphyxiation- in its final grim struggle to survive the brain takes all oxygen that is left, even that in those living cells under the nails. Hi, folks, my name's Oz the Gweat and Tewwible, but you can call me Oz if you want- hell, we're old friends by now. Just stopped by to whop you with a little congestive heart failure or a cranial blood clot or something; can't stay, got to see a woman about a breech birth, then I've got a little smoke-inhalation job to do in Omaha.”

Stephen King Pet Sematary

Pet Sematary (1983)

Death , Food , Birth , Failure

“As mineralogy constitutes a part of chemistry, it is clear that this arrangement [of minerals] must derive its principles from chemistry. The most perfect mode of arrangement would certainly be to allow bodies to follow each other according to the order of their electro-chemical properties, from the most electro-negative, oxygen, to the most electro-positive, potassium; and to place every compound body according to its most electro-positive ingredient.”

Jöns Jacob Berzelius (1779–1848) Swedish chemist

Jöns Jacob Berzelius, An Attempt to Establish a Pure Scientific System of Mineralogy (1814), trans. J. Black, 48.

Parting , Perfection

“Now was the present, now was the time containing that sweet union of carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, spirit, will and imagination named Nancy.”

Jack Vance book Big Planet

Source: Big Planet (1957), Chapter 8 “A Matter of Vitamins” (p. 80)

Imagination , Time

“THIS BEACH NOT SAFE FOR SWIMMING
NOT Drinking Water
UNFIT FOR HUMAN CONSUMPTION
Now Wash Your Hands
(Penalty for noncompliance $50)
FILTERMASK DISPENSER
Use product once only—maximum 1 hour
OXYGEN
25¢”

John Brunner book The Sheep Look Up

December “SIGNS OF THE TIMES“
The Sheep Look Up (1972)

Penalty , Drink , Water

“The earth had more oxygen in the past than it does now. Now you kids are going to be told in textbooks that the earth had no oxygen at the beginning, when life was evolving, called a "reducing atmosphere." That is baloney! […] It could not have evolved with oxygen, or without oxygen! But, if you double the air pressure and increase oxygen, not only does your hemoglobin take on oxygen, like it's supposed to, your plasma will get oxygen saturated, which means you could run hundreds of miles, without getting tired! Adam and Eve didn't need a car. They could run to grandma's.”

Kent Hovind (1953) American young Earth creationist

Creation seminars (2003-2005), The Garden of Eden

Life , Cars , Past , Grandma

“Straddling the top of the world, one foot in China and the other in Nepal, I cleared the ice from my oxygen mask, hunched a shoulder against the wind, and stared absently down at the vastness of Tibet.”

Jon Krakauer book Into Thin Air

Source: Into Thin Air (1997), Ch. 1.
Context: Straddling the top of the world, one foot in China and the other in Nepal, I cleared the ice from my oxygen mask, hunched a shoulder against the wind, and stared absently down at the vastness of Tibet. I understood on some dim, detached level that the sweep of earth beneath my feet was a spectacular sight. I'd been fantasizing about this moment, and the release of emotion that would accompany it, for many months. But now that I was finally here, actually standing on the summit of Mount Everest, I just couldn't summon the energy to care.

World

“You would think that if you bring oxygen to the organism, the organism lives. But there may be other organisms in there that thrive in darkness and in a more anaerobic environment. Watching those creatures writhe will always be interesting.”

Jon Stewart (1962) American political satirist, writer, television host, actor, media critic and stand-up comedian

On whether satire would be difficult under an Obama administration
Hartford Advocate Interview (2008)
Context: If someone was to introduce hope and idealism into our political system, I think the tension that would create in other areas would certainly be ripe. You would think that if you bring oxygen to the organism, the organism lives. But there may be other organisms in there that thrive in darkness and in a more anaerobic environment. Watching those creatures writhe will always be interesting.

Thinking

“Night flight to San Francisco; chase the moon across America. God, it’s been years since I was on a plane. When we hit 35,000 feet we’ll have reached the tropopause, the great belt of calm air, as close as I’ll ever get to the ozone. I dreamed we were there. The plane leapt the tropopause, the safe air, and attained the outer rim, the ozone, which was ragged and torn, patches of it threadbare as old cheesecloth, and that was frightening. But I saw something that only I could see because of my astonishing ability to see such things: Souls were rising, from the earth far below, souls of the dead, of people who had perished, from famine, from war, from the plague, and they floated up, like skydivers in reverse, limbs all akimbo, wheeling and spinning. And the souls of these departed joined hands, clasped ankles, and formed a web, a great net of souls, and the souls were three-atom oxygen molecules of the stuff of ozone, and the outer rim absorbed them and was repaired. Nothing’s lost forever. In this world, there’s a kind of painful progress. Longing for what we’ve left behind, and dreaming ahead. At least I think that’s so.”

Tony Kushner (1956) American playwright and screenwriter

God , Pain , War , People

“Imagine if trees gave off wifi signals, we would be planting so many trees and we’d probably save the Planet too. Too bad they only produce the oxygen we breathe.”

Ralph Smart

Bad luck , Tree , Imagination

“I hope the first set we meet are kind and smart and savvy, and also mammals who breathe oxygen and have hierarchical structure, because otherwise we’re going to not be able to figure out how to say anything useful and understandable, and if they’re not kind, they may decide they’re better off without us…”

Arkady Martine (1985) Science fiction author

On her hope if humans should ever encounter extraterrestrials in “Interviews: Arkady Martine” https://bookpage.com/interviews/23863-arkady-martine-science-fiction-fantasy#.XfvZnK5Kjcs in BookPage (2019 Mar 26)

Hope , Understanding

“I learned to write reading North American literature, I love your literature, but I have this feeling that if a country only reads its own literature, it will run out of oxygen.”

Samanta Schweblin (1978) Argentine writer

On her encouraging that Americans read literature beyond their country in “Samanta Schweblin on Revealing Darkness Through Fiction” https://lithub.com/samanta-schweblin-on-revealing-darkness-through-fiction/ in LitHub (2017 Jan 12)

Reading , Country , Learning , Literature

“The psychology of the religious experience has been well-researched and taped. There are many paths up the mountain—sensory deprivation or sensory overload—emotional response to stimuli or the lack thereof is common. Drugs, of course, from psychoactives to the more mundane depressants. Electropophy can bring it about, as can organic brain damage, lack or excess of oxygen, even sex can trigger it. And what it is, according to the science of man and mue, is a subjective mental state, somewhere to the left of hypnosis. A trick the mind plays on itself. A delusion, void of reality.”

Steve Perry book The Man Who Never Missed

Source: The Man Who Never Missed (1985), Chapter 7 (pp. 56-57)

Sex , Science , Reality , Mountain