Caesar's Last Breath Quotes

“In a scene right out of Catch-22, the construction firm requested the “best” iron available for some components. Little did they know that the foundry sold three grades of iron ingots: best, best best, and best best best.”
― Sam Kean, Caesar's Last Breath: Decoding the Secrets of the Air Around Us

“Every molecule in our bodies started off life as a gas, and long after our demise, when the big red bloated sun swallows everything around us, all those atoms will return to a gaseous state.”
― Sam Kean, Caesar's Last Breath: Decoding the Secrets of the Air Around Us

“the navy brought an ark’s worth of animals to Bikini and distributed them among the target ships, to test the biological effects of atomic bombs. After this was announced, several thousand angry letters poured into U.S. government offices. Ninety people even volunteered to take the animals’ places, including the writer E. B. White and a prisoner in San Quentin who said he wanted to do society some good for a change.”
― Sam Kean, Caesar's Last Breath: Decoding the Secrets of the Air Around Us

“Don’t damn people to hell, damn them to Venus.”
― Sam Kean, Caesar's Last Breath: Decoding the Secrets of the Air Around Us

“limelight—which involved streaming oxygen and hydrogen over burning quicklime—provided even brighter light and led to the first spotlights”
― Sam Kean, Caesar's Last Breath: Decoding the Secrets of the Air Around Us

“several South American countries actually went to war over these piles of bird shit.”
― Sam Kean, Caesar's Last Breath: Decoding the Secrets of the Air Around Us

“Across the world, scientists estimate that we will suffer several million extra cases of carbon-14-related cancer thanks to nukes, including two million extra cancer deaths, when all is said and done—with most of them still to come. (Remember, too, that this is just carbon-14; other radioactive species are still floating around as well,”
― Sam Kean, Caesar's Last Breath: The Epic Story of The Air Around Us

“Boyle inaugurated a long and less-than-glorious tradition of scientists sticking animals beneath bell jars—larks, mice, cats, snakes, cheese mites—and taking notes while they suffocated.”
― Sam Kean, Caesar's Last Breath: The Epic Story of The Air Around Us

“air and gases are distinct things, the first being a substance, the second a state of matter.”
― Sam Kean, Caesar's Last Breath: The Epic Story of The Air Around Us

“That etymology suits gases, considering how unruly gas molecules are, but”
― Sam Kean, Caesar's Last Breath: The Epic Story of The Air Around Us

“Van Helmont finally coined the word “gas” to deal with this miscellany, a word he adapted from the Greek word “chaos.”
― Sam Kean, Caesar's Last Breath: The Epic Story of The Air Around Us

“(Perhaps we all should be so lucky to read our own obituaries…)”
― Sam Kean, Caesar's Last Breath: Decoding the Secrets of the Air Around Us

“Somehow, though, life turned that danger around, and this former poison became essential. It may sound trite, but this reversal always reminds me of that old chestnut about how the word “crisis” in Chinese is formed from two characters, one meaning danger and the other opportunity.”
― Sam Kean, Caesar's Last Breath: Decoding the Secrets of the Air Around Us