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Leo Hendrik Baekeland
(14 Nov 1863 - 23 Feb 1944)
Belgian-American industrial chemist.
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Science Quotes by Leo Hendrik Baekeland (3 quotes)
How few people will realize how much detail had to be gone into before Bakelite was a commercial success.
— Leo Hendrik Baekeland
Diary entry (13 Oct 1909). In Savage Grace (1985, 2007), 65.
If I had my life to live over again I would not devote it to develop new industrial processes: I would try to add my humble efforts to use Science to the betterment of the human race.
I despair of the helter-skelter methods of our vaulted homo sapiens, misguided by his ignorance and his politicians. If we continue our ways, there is every possibility that the human race may follow the road of former living races of animals whose fossils proclaim that they were not fit to continue. Religion, laws and morals is not enough. We need more. Science can help us.
I despair of the helter-skelter methods of our vaulted homo sapiens, misguided by his ignorance and his politicians. If we continue our ways, there is every possibility that the human race may follow the road of former living races of animals whose fossils proclaim that they were not fit to continue. Religion, laws and morals is not enough. We need more. Science can help us.
— Leo Hendrik Baekeland
Letter to a friend (14 Jan 1934). In Savage Grace (1985, 2007), 62.
Knowledge is like a knife. In the hands of a well-balanced adult it is an instrument for good of inestimable value; but in the hands of a child, an idiot, a criminal, a drunkard or an insane man, it may cause havoc, misery, suffering and crime. Science and religion have this in common, that their noble aims, their power for good, have often, with wrong men, deteriorated into a boomerang to the human race.
— Leo Hendrik Baekeland
In 'Applied Chemistry', Science (22 Oct 1915), New Series, 42, No. 1086, 548.
See also:
- 14 Nov - short biography, births, deaths and events on date of Baekeland's birth.
In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion.
(1987) -- 
