A. A. Gill
A. A. Gill

Penicillin and plastic bags help a lot, fridges and hot water make manliness more comfortable and Tom Ford's fragrance range makes it smell better, but the idea that has pushed our lives into the light more than any other -ism or -ology is feminism.

Clive Thompson
Clive Thompson

The only reason we don't notice how absolutely interwoven our thinking processes have become with older technologies - pencils, paper, electric light, penicillin, fire - is that they're old, so we've ceased to notice their effects.

Corbin Bernsen
Corbin Bernsen

If we stop exploring space, we're going to lose the same part of us that found vaccines and penicillin, the part that searches for cures to cancer and AIDS.

Elif Batuman
Elif Batuman

I grew up thinking that it was immoral to idealize the past because, in the past, there was slavery and no penicillin.

Ellen Ullman
Ellen Ullman

The web is just another stunning point in the two-hundred-thousand-year history of human beings on earth. The taming of fire; the discovery of penicillin; the publication of 'Jane Eyre' - add anything you like.

Harry Kroto
Harry Kroto

Imagine if we had stopped science in 1904. Yes, there would have been no nerve gas and no Bhopal, but there would also have been no penicillin. All science is a trade-off.

Howard Florey
Howard Florey

Perhaps the most useful lesson which has come out of the work on penicillin has been the demonstration that success in this field depends on the development and coordinated use of technical methods.

James Buchan
James Buchan

The truth is, of course, that history is not completed in modern commerce any more than philosophy is perfected in political economy. In other words, there is nothing timeless or God-given about filling stations and penicillin and plastic bags.

Jess Phillips
Jess Phillips

I had pneumonia when I was 18 months old and I was given penicillin, which I was allergic to, and since then my teeth have been yellow.

Katherine Dunn
Katherine Dunn

Prior to penicillin and medical research, death was an everyday occurrence. It was intimate.