8 Alton Brown Quotes on Education

Alton Brown quotes on education

52. Candy making is basically the manipulation of sucrose by heat. Taffy, jawbreakers, fudge, divinity, butterscotch are all made possible by the fact that between 230 and 350 degrees plain old table sugar, sucrose, goes through more changes than a teenager during prom week.

79. No matter how much creativity goes into it, cooking is an art -- or perhaps I should say a craft. It abides by absolute rules, physics, chemistry, etc. and that means that unless you understand the science you cannot reach the art. We're not talking about painting here -- cooking's more like engineering. I happen to think that there is great beauty in great engineering (the wing of a Boeing 777, a suspension bridge) but they are not works of art, they are works of science. To my mind art is a matter of personal expression and the exchange of ideas; food is in the end, fuel -- a means to an end.

80. I approach cooking from a science angle because I need to understand how things work. If I understand the egg, I can scramble it better. It's a simple as that.

82. When I get things -- when I really get something -- I have a talent for being able to communicate it and help others get it faster and better than I did. It's probably my only true talent. I think that I'm a teacher that happens to be a decent filmmaker. And that I happen to be able to use the visual narrative form in an effective way. I think I use television in a relatively positive way.

94. I had kicked around the idea for Good Eats when I was directing commercials. I kept thinking, 'Somebody has to make a food show that is actually educational and entertaining at the same time ... a show that got down to the 'why things happen.'' Plus, I hated my job -- I didn't think it was very worthwhile. The world's got enough Pampers and retread tires without me.

106. I think the part of my job that I take most seriously is being an educator. If I can get people interested enough in food to adventure into it themselves and to understand it better -- that's what my fondest hope is.

108. I am a nerd, I guess, if you think that getting kind of excited about understanding ionic bonds is nerdy. Truth is, I was a horrible student. I sucked at everything because nothing mattered to me. History was a bunch of numbers, chemistry was a bunch of symbols, math was bunch of equations. And once in my adulthood, I started getting really interested in food. All of those things started to make sense, and now I'm into it. I can't learn enough about chemistry because now it applies to something. And I blame the educational system for that -- for making it meaningless. For making a lot of what we learn in the educational system meaningless.

114. Poppy seeds! Poppies!