Quotes and Epigraphs
The chapter epigraphs from The Blueprint of Water.
“If all scientific knowledge were destroyed and only one sentence could be passed on to the next generation, it should state that ‘all things are made of atoms.’”
— Richard Feynman (Chapter 1: Building Blocks)
“Water is the most anomalous liquid known.”
— Philip Ball (Chapter 2: The Hero of Heat Transfer)
“Nothing is softer or more flexible than water, yet nothing can resist it.”
— Lao Tzu (Chapter 3: The Solvent)
“If you had to reduce all of chemistry to one word, it would be equilibrium.”
— often attributed to Linus Pauling (Chapter 4: The Power of Hydrogen)
“We did not intend the consequences; we only triggered the conditions.”
— anonymous engineering aphorism (Chapter 5: Carbonated Water)
“If the human condition were the periodic table, maybe love would be hydrogen at No. 1. Death would be helium at No. 2. Power, I reckon, would be where oxygen is.”
— David Mitchell (Chapter 6: Destructive Oxidation)
“Rust never sleeps.”
— Neil Young (Chapter 7: Corrosion)
“An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.”
— Benjamin Franklin (Chapter 8: Scale)
“Gentlemen, it is the microbes who will have the last word.”
— Louis Pasteur (Chapter 9: Microbiology)
“Dirt is essentially matter out of place.”
— Mary Douglas (often attributed to Lord Chesterfield) (Chapter 10: Suspended Solids)
“When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the Universe.”
— John Muir (Chapter 11: The Pillars of Water Treatment)
“The production of heat alone is not sufficient to give birth to power: it is necessary that there should also be cold; without it, the heat would be useless.”
“Water flows because it is willing to fall. Steam rises because it has no choice.”
— Anonymous (Chapter 13: Heating Things Up)
“We shape our buildings; thereafter they shape us.”
— Winston Churchill (Chapter 14: The Blueprint)