Leo Baekeland Quotes

• I was trying to make something really hard, but then I thought I should make something really soft instead, that could be molded into different shapes. That was how I came up with the first plastic. I called it Bakelite.

  Leo Baekeland

  Trying, Different, Shapes

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• 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 Baekeland

  Children, Knowledge, Science

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• How few people will realize how much detail had to be gone into before Bakelite was a commercial success.

  Leo Baekeland

  Success, People, Details

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• 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.

  Leo Baekeland

  Ignorance, Humility, Humble

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• Well, it was kind of an accident, because plastic is not what I meant to invent. I had just sold photograph paper to Eastman Kodak for 1 million dollars.

  Leo Baekeland

  Photography, Dollars, Paper

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• Then I was president of the Bakelite Corporation from 1910 to 1930

  Leo Baekeland

  President, Corporations, 1930s

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• In 1893 I founded a chemical company which I ran until 1899.

  Leo Baekeland

  Chemicals, Company, Ran

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• I also served on many government committees.

  Leo Baekeland

  Government, Committees, Congressional Committees

  7 Copy quote

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