Great Throughts Treasury

"The noblest exercise of the mind within doors, and most befitting a person of quality, is study."

"It cannot, of course, be stated with absolute certainty that no elements can combine with argon; but it appears at least improbable that any compounds will be formed. [This held true for a century, until in Aug 2000, the first argon compound was formed, argon fluorohydride, HArF, but stable only below 40 K (−233 °C).] "

"As Indonesia confronts its subsidies, and as other countries begin to move prices closer to market levels, it takes some of the incentives for smuggling out."

"But this particular incident is probably going to raise questions that maybe some product stocks would be in order. I'm not sure that anyone anticipated the kind of devastation we've seen in those refineries."

"I don't think even OPEC likes to see prices at these levels. It's not in their interest,"

"I think Russia has made a serious mistake. It has demonstrated its willingness to use its gas as a political and economic tool."

"If Russia is prepared to run the risk of cutting off supplies to its neighbors if they have a disagreement, how reliable are they as a supplier? You have to ask the question."

"It's shocking. There is no fundamental reason. Prices are talked up by politics, stock levels and security concerns."

"It's not an easy topic because it gets at some fairly delicate issues. The source of some of the smuggling, who's involved, means it is probably not that easy a topic to tackle."

"It's hard to say we had been thinking about this sort of problem. The traditional supply disruption you think about is a political one, like the 1973-1974 embargo. Here, you had a situation where a local refining problem could become a global one."

"The good news is that China, India and Indonesia don't much like pollution either... but they've got to deal with the politics of energy development and pricing,"

"People are saying 'let's take a second look' at nuclear power. Rising oil prices means nuclear is becoming more economically attractive, and gas prices are a second kick in the pants."

"The U.S. can't isolate itself from global markets so whether it buys its oil from the Middle East or not it will be exposed to the same supply conditions of the market and the same price conditions of any other importer."

"Russia has done some serious damage to its otherwise-good reputation for security of supply. Europe is going to have to take a hard look at their exposure and whether there's a way to fix that."

"There needs to be a better assessment of what the vulnerabilities are and what constitutes vulnerability."

"This is not about setting up some supranational scheme."

"But I am leaving the regions of fact, which are difficult to penetrate, but which bring in their train rich rewards, and entering the regions of speculation, where many roads lie open, but where a few lead to a definite goal."

"Chemistry and physics are experimental sciences; and those who are engaged in attempting to enlarge the boundaries of science by experiment are generally unwilling to publish speculations; for they have learned, by long experience, that it is unsafe to anticipate events. It is true, they must make certain theories and hypotheses. They must form some kind of mental picture of the relations between the phenomena which they are trying to investigate, else their experiments would be made at random, and without connection."

"One of the earliest questions asked by an intelligent child is: ?What is this made of?? ?What is that made of?? And the answer is generally more or less satisfactory. For example, if the question relates to butter, the reply may be, ?From cream.? It may be explained, besides, that when cream is beaten up, or churned, the butter separates, leaving skim-milk behind. But the question has not been answered. The child may ask, ?Was the butter in the milk before it was churned? or has it been made out of the milk by the churning?? Possibly the person to whom the question is addressed may know that the milk contained the butter in the state of fine globules, and that the process of churning breaks up the globules, and causes them to stick together. The original question has not really been answered; and indeed it is not an easy one to reply to. Precisely such questions suggested themselves to the people of old, and they led to many speculations."

"Progress is made by trial and failure; the failures are generally a hundred times more numerous than the successes; yet they are usually left unchronicled. The reason is that the investigator feels that even though he has failed in achieving an expected result, some other more fortunate experimenter may succeed, and it is unwise to discourage his attempts."

"We have all heard of the puzzle given to Archimedes?. His finding that the crown was of gold was a discovery; but he invented the method of determining the density of solids. Indeed, discoverers must generally be inventors; though inventors are not necessarily discoverers."