Alexander Fleming Quotes

#1. One sometimes finds what one is not looking for

Alexander Fleming

#2. It is the lone worker who makes the first advance in a subject; the details may be worked out by a team, but the prime idea is due to enterprise, thought, and perception of an individual.

Alexander Fleming

#3. (The discovery of penicillin) was a triumph of accident, a fortunate occurrence which happened while I was working on a purely academic bacteriological problem.

Alexander Fleming

#4. I have been trying to point out that in our lives chance may have an astonishing influence and, if I may offer advice to the young laboratory worker, it would be this - never to neglect an extraordinary appearance or happening.

Alexander Fleming

#5. Suggested remedy for the common cold: A good gulp of whiskey at bedtime-it's not very scientific, but it helps.

Alexander Fleming

#6. I play with microbes. There are, of course, many rules to this play ... but when you have acquired knowledge and experience it is very pleasant to break the rules and to be able to find something nobody has thought of.

Alexander Fleming

#7. If penicillin can cure those that are ill, Spanish sherry can bring the dead back to life.

Alexander Fleming

#8. For the birth of something new, there has to be a happening. Newton saw an apple fall; James Watt watched a kettle boil; Rontgen fogged some photographic plates. And these people knew enough to translate ordinary happenings into something new ...

Alexander Fleming

#9. The unprepared mind cannot see the outstretched hand of opportunity.

Alexander Fleming

#10. Penicillin sat on a shelf for ten years while I was called a quack.

Alexander Fleming

#11. Penicillin cures, but wine makes people happy.

Alexander Fleming

#12. Nature makes penicillin; I just found it.

Alexander Fleming

#13. It was astonishing that for some considerable distance around the mould growth the staphococcal colonies were undergoing lysis. What had formerly been a well-grown colony was now a faint shadow of its former self ... I was sufficiently interested to pursue the subject.

Alexander Fleming