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

One sometimes finds what one is not looking for.

Penicillin cures, but wine makes people happy.

Nature makes penicillin; I just found it.

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.

One sometimes finds what one is not looking for. When I woke up just after dawn on Sept. 28, 1928, I certainly didn’t plan to revolutionize all medicine by discovering the world’s first antibiotic, or bacteria killer. But I guess that was exactly what I did.

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

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

The unprepared mind cannot see the outstretched hand of opportunity.

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

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 the enterprise, thought, and perception of an individual.

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

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.

I just decided that I didn’t want to be in the academic world, because it was [really] too easy for me at the top. But also it wasn’t active enough for me.

While I had been, I guess, quite brilliant, academically, in my college years, I also had been editor of the paper, and I loved that. And, that was a much more active thing. And I missed it when I was doing graduate work.

Sovereignty and the right to rule cannot be conferred on anyone no matter who … as a result of an academic discussion. Sovereignty is acquired by force and power and violence.

There were a lot of people who were willing to write a letter for me. Not because I was academically inclined, but because I worked hard.

If you need to invoke your academic pedigree or job title for people to believe what you say, then you need a better argument.

I look at Google and think they have a strong academic culture. Elegant solutions to complex problems.