Impurity Quotes (2 quotes)
In my opinion, the American “war on drugs” represents merely a new variation in humanity’s age-old passion to “purge” itself of its “impurities” by staging vast dramas of scapegoat persecutions. In the past, we have witnessed religious or “holy” wars waged against people who professed the wrong faith; … now we are witnessing a medical or “therapeutic” war, waged against people who use the wrong drugs.
From 'The Morality of Drug Controls', collected in Ronald Hamowy (ed.), Dealing with Drugs: Consequences of Government Control (1987), 329.
The chemists work with inaccurate and poor measuring services, but they employ very good materials. The physicists, on the other hand, use excellent methods and accurate instruments, but they apply these to very inferior materials. The physical chemists combine both these characteristics in that they apply imprecise methods to impure materials.
Quoted in Ralph Oesper, The Human Side of Scientists (1975), 116.