John Dalton Quotes

John Dalton's records, carefully preserved for a century, were destroyed during the World War II bombing of Manchester. It is not only the living who are killed in war.

It's the right idea, but not the right time.

If I have succeeded better than many who surround me, it has been chiefly - may I say almost solely - from universal assiduity.

Atoms are round balls of wood invented by Dr. Dalton. (Answer given by a pupil to a question on atomic theory, as reported by Sir Henry Enfield Roscoe.)

I was introduced to Mr. Davy, who has rooms adjoining mine (in the Royal Institution); he is a very agreeable and intelligent young man, and we have interesting conversation in an evening...

John Dalton was a very singular Man: He has none of the manners or ways of the world. A tolerable mathematician He gained his livelihood I believe by teaching the mathematics to young people. He pursued science always with mathematical views. He seemed little attentive to the labours of men except when they countenanced or confirmed his own ideas... He was a very disinterested man, seemed to have no ambition beyond that of being thought a good Philosopher. He was a very coarse Experimenter & almost always found the results he required.—Memory & observation were subordinate qualities in his mind. He followed with ardour analogies & inductions & however his claims to originality may admit of question I have no doubt that he was one of the most original philosophers of his time & one of the most ingenious.

[John] Dalton was a man of regular habits. For fifty-seven years he walked out of Manchester every day; he measured the rainfall, the temperature—a singularly monotonous enterprise in this climate. Of all that mass of data, nothing whatever came. But of the one searching, almost childlike question about the weights that enter the construction of these simple molecules—out of that came modern atomic theory. That is the essence of science: ask an impertinent question, and you are on the way to the pertinent answer.

In the vestibule of the Manchester Town Hall are placed two life-sized marble statues facing each other. One of these is that of John Dalton ... the other that of James Prescott Joule. ... Thus the honour is done to Manchester's two greatest sons—to Dalton, the founder of modern Chemistry and of the atomic theory, and the laws of chemical-combining proportions; to Joule, the founder of modern physics and the discoverer of the Law of Conservation of Energy. One gave to the world the final proof ... that in every kind of chemical change no loss of matter occurs; the other proved that in all the varied modes of physical change, no loss of energy takes place.

Dalton regarded his chess opponent, from whom the outburst had come. “What on earth has got into you?” Lord Peter sat back, a triumphant smirk on his lips. “I moved!” “Well, congratulations. What did you move?” “Bishop to

Vincent. “How can I

the Palace of Westminster to the Commons to deliver the Budget speech, he bumped into John Carvel, political correspondent of the London evening paper, the Star. The newsman tried his arm and asked what was in the Budget. He could hardly have expected to be told as Budget decisions were naturally the closest of secrets until they had been announced publicly in parliament. Dalton assumed that Carvel was likewise on the way to the press gallery to listen to the Budget. In a succinct summary of his plans, he told Carvel, ‘No more on tobacco; a penny on beer; something on dogs and [football] pools but not on horses; increase in purchase tax, but only on articles now taxable; profits tax doubled.’ Instead of proceeding

As a youth, I was too sunny and filled with the milk of human kindness to be able to comprehend such a bitter moral to the story. I just thought it meant Dalton did not need the approval of his peers, that he was a nonconformist (as was I, and all of my generation. We were nonconformists together, in perfect lockstep, each careful to be a nonconformist exactly like all the others). Like I said, I did not get it.

when she asks what happened, but once again Dalton delivers the joke with the disdain and bemusement of a waiter being asked for a Pot Noodle at The Ritz.

32 JOHN DALTON 1766-1844

face of Adam Michaels as well. Thinking of how good Dalton was at smuggling to begin with. No alien race had a chance.

need be. Yep. But keep it on the down low. Dalton thought. Knowing damn good and well

tired and received a weak,