Bill Bryson
“There are three stages in scientific discovery. First, people deny that it is true, then they deny that it is important; finally they credit the wrong person.”
― Bill Bryson
“Not one of your pertinent ancestors was squashed, devoured, drowned, starved, stranded, stuck fast, untimely wounded, or otherwise deflected from its life's quest of delivering a tiny charge of genetic material to the right partner at the right moment in order to perpetuate the only possible sequence of hereditary combinations that could result — eventually, astoundingly, and all too briefly — in you.”
― Bill Bryson
“It is a slightly arresting notion that if you were to pick yourself apart with tweezers, one atom at a time, you would produce a mound of fine atomic dust, none of which had ever been alive but all of which had once been you.”
― Bill Bryson
“I mused for a few moments on the question of which was worse, to lead a life so boring that you are easily enchanted, or a life so full of stimulus that you are easily bored.”
― Bill Bryson
“Protons give an atom its identity, electrons its personality.”
― Bill Bryson
“We used to build civilizations. Now we build shopping malls.”
― Bill Bryson
“Physics is really nothing more than a search for ultimate simplicity, but so far all we have is a kind of elegant messiness.”
― Bill Bryson
“Energy is liberated matter, matter is energy waiting to happen.”
― Bill Bryson
“Geologists are never at a loss for paperweights.”
― Bill Bryson
"Take a moment from time to time to remember that you are alive. I know this sounds a trifle obvious, but it is amazing how little time we take to remark upon this singular and gratifying fact. By the most astounding stroke of luck an infinitesimal portion of all the matter in the universe came together to create you and for the tiniest moment in the great span of eternity you have the incomparable privilege to exist."
― Bill Bryson
"The best that can be said for Norwegian television is that it gives you the sensation of a coma without the worry and inconvenience."
― Bill Bryson
"English is full of booby traps for the unwary foreigner. Any language where the unassuming word fly signifies an annoying insect, a means of travel, and a critical part of a gentleman's apparel is clearly asking to be mangled."
― Bill Bryson
"I have long known that it is part of God's plan for me to spend a little time with each of the most stupid people on earth."
― Bill Bryson
"Because we humans are big and clever enough to produce and utilize antibiotics and disinfectants, it is easy to convince ourselves that we have banished bacteria to the fringes of existence. Don't you believe it. Bacteria may not build cities or have interesting social lives, but they will be here when the Sun explodes. This is their planet, and we are on it only because they allow us to be."
― Bill Bryson
"Out of the thirty thousand types of edible plants thought to exist on Earth, just eleven—corn, rice, wheat, potatoes, cassava, sorghum, millet, beans, barley, rye, and oats—account for 93 percent of all that humans eat, and every one of them was first cultivated by our Neolithic ancestors."
― Bill Bryson
"The upshot of all this is that we live in a universe whose age we can't quite compute, surrounded by stars whose distances we don't altogether know, filled with matter we can't identify, operating in conformance with physical laws whose properties we don’t truly understand."
― Bill Bryson
"There are only three things that can kill a farmer: lightning, rolling over in a tractor, and old age."
― Bill Bryson
"It's an unnerving thought that we may be the living universe's supreme achievement and its worst nightmare simultaneously."
― Bill Bryson
"Tell me, did they specify 'asshole' on the job description or did you go on a course?"
― Bill Bryson
― Bill Bryson