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Arthur Holly Compton
(10 Sep 1892 - 15 Mar 1962)

American physicist.


Science Quotes by Arthur Holly Compton (3)

It is hard to think of fissionable materials when fashioned into bombs as being a source of happiness. However this may be, if with such destructive weapons men are to survive, they must grow rapidly in human greatness. A new level of human understanding is needed. The reward for using the atom's power towards man's welfare is great and sure. The punishment for its misuse would seem to be death and the destruction of the civilization that has been growing for a thousand years. These are the alternatives that atomic power, as the steel of Daedalus, presents to mankind. We are forced to grow to greater manhood.
— Arthur Holly Compton
Atomic Quest: A Personal Narrative (1956), xix.
See also:  |  Atomic Bomb (11)  |  War (18)

The scientist who recognizes God knows only the God of Newton. To him the God imagined by Laplace and Comte is wholly inadequate. He feels that God is in nature, that the orderly ways in which nature works are themselves the manifestations of God's will and purpose. Its laws are his orderly way of working.
— Arthur Holly Compton
The Human Meaning of Science (1940), 69.
See also:  |  God (42)  |  Isidore Comte (2)  |  Nature (78)

Yet is it possible in terms of the motion of atoms to explain how men can invent an electric motor, or design and build a great cathedral? If such achievements represent anything more than the requirements of physical law, it means that science must investigate the additional controlling factors, whatever they may be, in order that the world of nature may be adequately understood. For a science which describes only the motions of inanimate things but fails to include the actions of living organisms cannot claim universality.
— Arthur Holly Compton
The Human Meaning of Science (1940), 31.
See also:  |  Atom (43)  |  Enquiry (27)  |  Law (44)


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Original words on great scientific discoveries.
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I have little patience with scientists who take a board of wood, look for its thinnest part and drill a great number of holes where drilling is easy. --Albert Einstein
I try to identify myself with the atoms...I ask what I would do if I were a carbon atom or a sodium atom. --Linus Pauling




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