QuoteProject
Chemistry... is like the maid occupied with daily civilisation; she is busy with fertilisers, medicines, glass, insecticides ... for she dispenses the recipes.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
ShareWTF𝕏

Interpretation

What this quote means

Chemistry plays a vital role in everyday life, transforming raw materials into useful products.

In this quote, Jean-Jacques Rousseau highlights the essential role that chemistry plays in daily civilization. He suggests that chemistry, much like a maid who manages and organizes, is constantly involved in the production of fertilizers, medicines, and various materials that contribute to the progress and well-being of society. By stating that chemistry 'dispenses the recipes,' he emphasizes the foundational knowledge and processes that enable humanity to create and sustain life through scientific advancements.

Themes

ChemistryCivilizationScienceProgressKnowledge

In practice

Example use cases

During a science exhibition, you can use this quote to highlight the importance of chemistry in creating products that society relies on.

More from Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Patience patience quotes is bitter, but its fruit is sweet.
Jean-Jacques RousseauRead
The infant, on opening his eyes, ought to see his country, and to the hour of his death never lose sight of it.
Jean-Jacques RousseauRead
What wisdom can you find that is greater than kindness?
Jean-Jacques RousseauRead
O love, if I regret the age when one savors you, it is not for the hour of pleasure, but for the one that follows it.
Jean-Jacques RousseauRead
Those people who treat politics and morality separately will never understand either of them.
Jean-Jacques RousseauRead
As evening approached, I came down from the heights of the island, and I liked then to go and sit on the shingle in some secluded spot by the lake; there the noise of the waves and the movement of the water, taking hold of my senses and driving all other agitation from my soul, would plunge me into delicious reverie in which night often stole upon me unawares.
Jean-Jacques RousseauRead

Similar quotes

If we could look through the skull into the brain of a consciously thinking person, and if the place of optimal excitability were luminous, then we should see playing over the cerebral surface, a bright spot with fantastic, waving borders constantly fluctuating in size and form, surrounded by a darkness more or less deep, covering the rest of the hemisphere.
Ivan PavlovRead
When you're in a spacecraft, you need to know what things you can touch and what things you shouldn't touch!
Buzz AldrinRead
What we eat has changed more in the last 40 years than in the previous 40,000. The survival of the current food system depends upon widespread ignorance of how it really operates.
Eric SchlosserRead
We should begin at the very root from which we spring, we should effect a radical reform in the character of the food.
Nikola TeslaRead
It is impossible to devise an experiment without a preconceived idea; devising an experiment, we said, is putting a question; we never conceive a question without an idea which invites an answer. I consider it, therefore, an absolute principle that experiments must always be devised in view of a preconceived idea, no matter if the idea be not very clear nor very well defined.
Claude BernardRead
So we find that the three possible solutions of the great problem of increasing human energy are answered by the three words: food, peace, work... Their scientific meaning and purpose now clear to me: food to increase the mass, peace to diminish the retarding force, and work to increase the force accelerating human movement.
Nikola TeslaRead

A little wisdom, now and then

Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.