Ahmed H. Zewail · 304 pages
Rating: (254 votes)
“When I was a child, I thought of my Delta town as the center of the
universe, but now I realize how little I know about the universe. As a
child, I thought I was immortal, but now I recognize how limited a time
we all have. As a child, success meant scoring A on every exam, but
now I take it to mean good health, close family and friends, achieve-
ments in my work, and helping others.”
― Ahmed H. Zewail, quote from Voyage Through Time: Walks of Life to the Nobel Prize
“I don't know all the reasons for these achievements, but I know that I love what I do and I have never wanted to rest on my laurels.”
― Ahmed H. Zewail, quote from Voyage Through Time: Walks of Life to the Nobel Prize
“Perhaps the most valuable thing he taught me (his father) was
that there is no contradiction between devotion to work and enjoyment
of life and people”
― Ahmed H. Zewail, quote from Voyage Through Time: Walks of Life to the Nobel Prize
“Interestingly, this was the only incident of blatant prejudice that I can
remember. But I am aware that such opinions exist in human beings, and
it's not a question of being Egyptian or being an Arab or being a Muslim.
One could be a Christian against a Jew or a Jew against a Christian, or a
white against a black, or a man against a woman. My philosophy is not
to let such attitudes stop me from what I want to do. I don't take it very
seriously, although as you can see, I remember the incident very well.
The point was I had to get on with my work and had to behave properly,
and in the process perhaps even change the opinion of these people. But
on the other hand, if I did nothing but complain and feel sorry for myself,
then I wouldn't get anywhere.”
― Ahmed H. Zewail, quote from Voyage Through Time: Walks of Life to the Nobel Prize
“in my first American
class—a freshman chemistry class during the 1969-70 academic year—
they looked at me as though I was supposed to be their nurse because
they were paying a stiff tuition. That's another concept I had to learn—
in American private schools we worked for them because they paid the
tuition, but in Egypt we were educating them.”
― Ahmed H. Zewail, quote from Voyage Through Time: Walks of Life to the Nobel Prize
“Egypt is the gift of the Nile, as the Greek historian Herodotus said many centuries ago, in about 450 BC.”
― Ahmed H. Zewail, quote from Voyage Through Time: Walks of Life to the Nobel Prize
“The prefix milli comes from Latin (and French for “thousandth”), micro and nano from Greek (for “small” and “dwarf respectively), and pico from Spanish (for “small”). Femto is Scandinavian, the root of the word for “fifteen” (femten)—nuclear physicists call a femtometer, the unit for the dimensions of atomic nuclei, a fermi. Attosecond, the next smaller unit, 10-18 second, uses a prefix also derived from Scandinavian, from the word for “eighteen.”
― Ahmed H. Zewail, quote from Voyage Through Time: Walks of Life to the Nobel Prize
“I stop in front of the bus station, look in on the waiting people, and think about all the places they are going. But I know they can’t run away from it or drink their way out of it or die to get rid of it. It’s always there, you just look at somebody and they give you a look like the Wrath of God.”
― Breece D'J Pancake, quote from The Stories of Breece D'J Pancake
“We're inches apart yet worlds away.”
― Amie Kaufman, quote from This Shattered World
“Every night, around midnight GMT, the Sun sets on the Cayman Islands, and doesn’t rise over the British Indian Ocean Territory until after 1:00 a.m. For that hour, the little Pitcairn Islands in the South Pacific are the only British territory in the Sun. The Pitcairn Islands have a population of a few dozen people, the descendants of the mutineers from the HMS Bounty. The islands became notorious in 2004 when a third of the adult male population, including the mayor, were convicted of child sexual abuse. As awful as the islands may be, they remain part of the British Empire, and unless they’re kicked out, the two-century-long British daylight will continue.”
― Randall Munroe, quote from What If?: Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions
“I would have to stop at a local shelter and possibly PetSmart. They had silent, stealthy, vicious predators available for adoption.”
― Ilona Andrews, quote from Sweep in Peace
“But beyond a certain scale vast was simply vast.”
― Alastair Reynolds, quote from House of Suns
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