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Linus Pauling

Linus Pauling Biography

Chemist

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“I realized that more and more I was saying, 'It seems to me that we have come to the time war ought to be given up. It no longer makes sense to kill 20 million or 40 million people because of a dispute between two nations who are running things, or decisions made by the people who really are running things. It no longer makes sense. Nobody wins. Nobody benefits from destructive war of this sort and there is all of this human suffering.' And Einstein was saying the same thing of course. So that is when we decided — my wife and I — that first, I was pretty effective as a speaker. Second, I better start boning up, studying these other fields so that nobody could stand up and say, 'Well, the authorities say such and such '.”

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Author:Linus Pauling
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“The best way to have a good idea is to have a lot of ideas.”

WayWritingIdeasMotivationalSuccessInspiringBusinessEducationKnowledgeCreativityWrittenInnovationLibertarianBest WayGood IdeasSuggestionsBrillianceGreat IdeaNew ThoughtBad IdeasWriters And WritingWriting By WritersCreativity And InnovationOriginal IdeasBusiness InnovationInnovation And BusinessImagination And CreativityIdeas And CreativityWriting From The HeartCreativity And WritingIdeas And InnovationImagination CreativityInspiration To WriteCreativity And LearningLogical Ideas
Author:Linus Pauling
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“Science is the search for the truth--it is not a game in which one tries to beat his opponent, to do harm to others. We need to have the spirit of science in international affairs, to make the conduct of international affairs the effort to find the right solution, the just solution of international problems, and not an effort by each nation to get the better of other nations, to do harm to them when it is possible. I believe in morality, in justice, in humanitarianism.”

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Author:Linus Pauling
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“We must have research for peace ... It would embrace the outstanding problems of morality. The time has come for man's intellect, his scientific method, to win over the immoral brutality and irrationality of war and militarism ... Now we are forced to eliminate from the world forever this vestige of prehistoric barbarism, this curse to the human race.”

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Author:Linus Pauling
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“I have been especially fortunate for about 50 years in having two memory banks available-whenever I can't remember something I ask my wife, and thus I am able to draw on this auxiliary memory bank. Moreover, there is a second way In which I get ideas ... I listen carefully to what my wife says, and in this way I often get a good idea. I recommend to ... young people ... that you make a permanent acquisition of an auxiliary memory bank that you can become familiar with and draw upon throughout your lives.”

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Author:Linus Pauling
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“You have to have a lot of ideas. First, if you want to make discoveries, it's a good thing to have good ideas. And second, you have to have a sort of sixth sense-the result of judgment and experience-which ideas are worth following up. I seem to have the first thing, a lot of ideas, and I also seem to have good judgment as to which are the bad ideas that I should just ignore, and the good ones, that I'd better follow up.”

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Author:Linus Pauling
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“It was obvious-to me at any rate-that the answer was to why an enzyme is able to speed up a chemical reaction by as much as 10 million times. It had to do this by lowering the energy of activation-the energy of forming the activated complex. It could do this by forming strong bonds with the activated complex, but only weak bonds with the reactants or products.”

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Author:Linus Pauling
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“An amino acid residue (other than glycine) has no symmetry elements. The general operation of conversion of one residue of a single chain into a second residue equivalent to the first is accordingly a rotation about an axis accompanied by translation along the axis. Hence the only configurations for a chain compatible with our postulate of equivalence of the residues are helical configurations.”

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Book:Linus Pauling: Selected Scientific Papers
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“It has been recognized that hydrogen bonds restrain protein molecules to their native configurations, and I believe that as the methods of structural chemistry are further applied to physiological problems it will be found that the significance of the hydrogen bond for physiology is greater than that of any other single structural feature.”

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Book:The Nature of the Chemical Bond and the Structure of Molecules and Crystals: An Introduction to Modern Structural Chemistry
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“The nucleic acids, as constituents of living organisms, are comparable In importance to proteins. There is evidence that they are Involved In the processes of cell division and growth, that they participate In the transmission of hereditary characters, and that they are important constituents of viruses. An understanding of the molecular structure of the nucleic acids should be of value In the effort to understand the fundamental phenomena of life.”

LifeShouldImportantCharacterScienceValuesProcessUnderstandingGrowthEffortInvolvedEvidenceImportanceFundamentalsStructureCellsDivisionOrganismsAcidVirusesProteinConstituentsTransmissionHereditaryLiving Organisms
Book:Linus Pauling: Biomolecular sciences
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“During the time that [Karl] Landsteiner gave me an education in the field of imununology, I discovered that he and I were thinking about the serologic problem in very different ways. He would ask, What do these experiments force us to believe about the nature of the world? I would ask, What is the most. simple and general picture of the world that we can formulate that is not ruled by these experiments? I realized that medical and biological investigators were not attacking their problems the same way that theoretical physicists do, the way I had been in the habit of doing.”

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Author:Linus Pauling
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“The McCarthy period came along...and many of the other scientists who had been working on these same lines gave up. Probably saying "Why should I sacrifice myself? I am a scientist, I am supposed to be working on scientific things, so I don't need to put myself at risk by talking about these possibilities." And I have said that perhaps I'm just stubborn... I have said "I don't like anybody to tell me what to do or to think, except Mrs. Pauling."”

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Author:Linus Pauling
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“I recognize that many physicists are smarter than I am-most of them theoretical physicists. A lot of smart people have gone into theoretical physics, therefore the field is extremely competitive. I console myself with the thought that although they may be smarter and may be deeper thinkers than I am, I have broader interests than they have.”

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Author:Linus Pauling
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“I believe that there is a greater power in the world than the evil power of military force, of nuclear bombs -- there is the power of good, of morality, of humanitarianism.”

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Book:Linus Pauling in His Own Words: Selections From His Writings, Speeches and Interviews
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