Compound

Famous quotes containing the word compound:

    Rammed me in with foul shirts and smocks, socks, foul stockings, greasy napkins, that, Master Brook, there was the rankest compound of villainous smell that ever offended nostril.
    William Shakespeare (1564–1616)

    He tries by a peculiar speech to speak
    The peculiar potency of the general,
    To compound the imagination’s Latin with
    The lingua franca et jocundissima.
    Wallace Stevens (1879–1955)

    Give a scientist a problem and he will probably provide a solution; historians and sociologists, by contrast, can offer only opinions. Ask a dozen chemists the composition of an organic compound such as methane, and within a short time all twelve will have come up with the same solution of CH4. Ask, however, a dozen economists or sociologists to provide policies to reduce unemployment or the level of crime and twelve widely differing opinions are likely to be offered.
    Derek Gjertsen, British scientist, author. Science and Philosophy: Past and Present, ch. 3, Penguin (1989)