Dmitri Mendeleev

The most all penetrating spirit before which will open the possibility of tilting not tables, but planets, is the spirit of free human inquiry. Believe only in that.

There is no doubt that there is a certain truth in the periodic law, but it is also certain that it is not yet fully understood.

A well-defined body of facts forces the mind to accept them, and the mind is then compelled to seek for their explanation.

The establishment of the law of periodicity has afforded a new and powerful means of investigating the nature of the elements.

I have had to exist on the fruits of my own labor from my earliest youth.

The edifice of science requires not only material, but also a plan, and necessitates the work of preparing the materials, putting them together, working out the plans and symmetrical proportions of the various parts.

Genius is the capacity for seeing relationships where lesser men see none.

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.

The periodic law has shown that our chemical individuals are subject to one general harmonious law, whose influence is felt in all the properties of simple bodies and their compounds.

No law of nature, however general, has been established all at once; its recognition has always been preceded by many presentiments.

We could live at the present day without a Plato, but a double number of Newtons is required to discover the secrets of nature.

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

The magnitude of the atomic weight determines the character of the element.

I wish to establish some sort of system not guided by chance but by some sort of definite and exact principle.

The unity of all science consists alone in its method, not in its material.

The periodic table is the universal catalog of everything you can drop on your foot.

When I began to write my 'Principles of Chemistry', I had to settle upon some system of elements for the book.

The petroleum industry owes its origin to the chemist.

A real scientist must be as unbiased as nature itself.

The striving for knowledge, the boundless craving to penetrate the mysteries of nature, is the most precious and the most ineradicable feature of the human mind.