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
“It took losing all that I held dear for me to learn a valuable lesson: only when everything is gone are you truly free.”
― Laura Thalassa, quote from The Queen of Traitors
“El modo en el que le otorgaron el poder de volar fue este: todas le hicieron cosquillas en los hombros y pronto sintió un divertido cosquilleo en esa parte, y entonces se alzó más y más alto y salió volando fuera de los jardines y sobre los tejados de las casas.”
― J.M. Barrie, quote from Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens
“People don't know that they do that to people when they do the things they shouldn't. Hurtful things are roots,they spread ,branch out, creep under the surface touching other parts of the lives of those they hurt. It's never one mistake, it's never one moment, it becomes a series of moments, each moment growing roots and spurting in different directions. And over time, they become muddled like an old twisted tree, strangling itself and tying itself up in knots.”
― Cecelia Ahern, quote from The Marble Collector
“When he sees me, he stops.
His eyes widen, his face pales.
And then before i can say anything, he's holding me.
And the worst part is-I want to hold him.
But I also want to slap him, hit him. Punch him. Tear out his throat.
I want him to tell me what he did to me was a mistake. Some horrible mix-up. . .after I'm done holding him back.”
― Courtney Summers, quote from Fall for Anything
“We’ve known for a long time that it was no longer possible to overturn this world, nor reshape it, nor head off its dangerous headlong rush. There’s been only one possible resistance: to not take it seriously.”
― Milan Kundera, quote from The Festival of Insignificance
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