Dmitri Mendeleev

I saw in a dream a table where all the elements fell into place as required. Awakening, I immediately wrote it down on a piece of paper.

Why do they [Americans] quarrel, why do they hate Negroes, Indians, even Germans, why do they not have science and poetry commensurate with themselves, why are there so many frauds and so much nonsense? I cannot soon give a solution to these questions...

Work, look for peace and calm in work: you will find it nowhere else.

There is nothing in science that cannot be explained to a barmaid.

The law of periodicity was a result of the accumulation of a large number of facts.

The elements which are the most widely diffused have small atomic weights.

I have achieved neither fame nor wealth, but I have learned to know the human heart.

The future of the Russian nation lies in the hands of the schoolmaster and the priest.

Why do they [Americans] quarrel, why do they hate Negroes, Indians, even Germans, why do they not have science and poetry commensurate with themselves, why are there so many frauds and so much nonsense? I cannot soon give a solution to these questions... It was clear that in the United States there was a development not of the best, but of the middle and worst sides of European civilization; the notorious general voting, the tendency to politics... all the same as in Europe.

Knowing how contented, free and joyful is life in the realms of science, one fervently wishes that many would enter their portals.

It is the function of science to discover the existence of a general reign of order in nature and to find the causes governing this order. And this refers in equal measure to the relations of man - social and political - and to the entire universe as a whole.

Without order, our science is nothing but a miserable collection of facts.

The periodic table is a work of art, a testament to the elegance and order of the natural world.

The edifice of science not only requires material, but also a plan. Without the material, the plan alone is but a castle in the air—a mere possibility; whilst the material without a plan is but useless matter.

Experiment itself cannot give truth, but it gives the means of destroying erroneous representations whilst confirming those which are true in all their consequences.

To conceive, understand, and grasp the whole symmetry of the scientific edifice, including its unfinished portions, is equivalent to tasting that enjoyment only conveyed by the highest forms of beauty and truth.

There are no grounds to think that knowledge and our mastery over matter have bounds.

The chemist must descend into the depths within himself, and find the spark of an idea to illuminate the darkness.

The essence of chemistry lies not in the pursuit of knowledge alone, but also in the pursuit of truth.

If statements of fact themselves depend upon the person who observes them, how much more distinct is the reflection of the personality of him who gives an account of methods and of philosophical speculations which form the essence of science!