173 Discovery Quotes

There is nothing new to be discovered in physics now. All that remains is more and more precise measurement.

What lead me more or less directly to the special theory of relativity was the conviction that the electromotive force acting on a body in motion in a magnetic field was nothing else but an electric field.

All I did was sit on the riverbank handing out river water. After I'm gone, I trust you will notice the river.

There are two possible outcomes: if the result confirms the hypothesis, then you've made a measurement. If the result is contrary to the hypothesis, then you've made a discovery.

Rather than believe that Watson and Crick made the DNA structure, I would rather stress that the structure made Watson and Crick.

The account of the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, as the manuscripts are inaccurately designated, and of the half a century of intense research that followed, is in itself a fascinating as well as an exasperating story.

Here before us was sufficient evidence to show that it really was an entrance to a tomb, and by the seals, to all outward appearances that it was intact.

Though I was satisfied that I was on the verge of perhaps a magnificent find, probably one of the missing tombs that I had been seeking for many years, I was much puzzled by the smallness of the opening in comparison with those of other royal tombs in the valley.

The news of the discovery spread fast all over the country, and inquisitive enquiries mingled with congratulations from this moment became the daily programme.

As was to be expected, the discovery of the nervous apparatus of the salivary glands immediately impelled physiologists to seek a similar apparatus in other glands lying deeper in the digestive canal.

I would think Until I found Something I can never find; - Something Lying On the ground, In the bottom Of my mind.

Through the years, a man peoples a space with images of provinces, kingdoms, mountains, bays, ships, islands, fishes, rooms, tools, stars, horses and people. Shortly before his death, he discovers that the patient labyrinth of lines traces the image of his own face.

There is many a rich stone laid up in the bowels of the earth, many a fair pearl laid up in the bosom of the sea, that never was seen, nor never shall be.

Only when I began studying chemical engineering at Oregon Agricultural College did I realize that I myself might discover something new about the nature of the world.

Secrets of the cosmos will begin to unravel. I, for one, can't wait.

Anthropology demands the open-mindedness with which one must look and listen, record in astonishment and wonder that which one would not have been able to guess.

It was wonderful to find America, but it would have been more wonderful to miss it.

I looked for perfection, and I found something better.

[In natural history,] great discovery often requires a map to a hidden mine filled with gems then easily gathered by conventional tools, not a shiny new space-age machine for penetrating previously inaccessible worlds.

It is only by the exercise of reason that man can discover God.

To know that no one before you has seen an organ you are examining, to trace relationships that have occurred to no one before, to immerse yourself in the wondrous crystalline world of the microscope, where silence reigns, circumscribed by its own horizon, a blindingly white arena - all this is so enticing that I cannot describe it.

The only real valuable thing is intuition. The intellect has little to do on the road to discovery.

The discovery of radioactivity created a momentary chaos in chemistry and physics; but it soon led to a fuller interpretation of the old ideas. It dispersed many difficulties, harmonized many discords, and - yea, more! It shewed the substance of Universe as a simplicity of Light and Life, manners to compose atoms, themselves capable of deeper self-realization through fresh complexities and organizations, each with its own peculiar powers and pleasures, each pursuing its path through the world where all things are possible.

If we make a couple of discoveries here and there we need not believe things will go on like this for ever.... Just as we hit water when we dig in the earth, so we discover the incomprehensible sooner or later.

The American who first discovered Columbus made a bad discovery.

I don't invent characters because the Almightly has already invented millions: Just like experts at fingerprints do not create fingerprints but learn how to read them.

The fact is that poetry is not the books in the library . . . Poetry is the encounter of the reader with the book, the discovery of the book.

Physics has entered a remarkable era. Ideas that were once the realm of science fiction are now entering our theoretical - and maybe even experimental - grasp. Brand-new theoretical discoveries about extra dimensions have irreversibly changed how particle physicists, astrophysicists, and cosmologists now think about the world. The sheer number and pace of discoveries tells us that we've most likely only scratched the surface of the wondrous possibilities that lie in store. Ideas have taken on a life of their own.

Attempt the end, and never stand to doubt; Nothing's so hard but search will find it out.

We learn wisdom from failure much more than from success. We often discover what will do by finding out what will not do; and probably he who never made a mistake never made a discovery.

We often discover what WILL do, by finding out what will not do; and probably he who never made a mistake never made a discovery.

The goal of mankind is knowledge. . . . Now this knowledge is inherent in man. No knowledge comes from outside: it is all inside. What we say a man 'knows,' should, in strict psychological language, be what he 'discovers' or 'unveils'; what man 'learns' is really what he discovers by taking the cover off his own soul, which is a mine of infinite knowledge.

It is one of our most exciting discoveries that local discovery leads to a complex of further discoveries. Corollary to this we find that we no sooner get a problem solved than we are overwhelmed with a multiplicity of additional problems in a most beautiful payoff of heretofore unknown, previously unrecognized, and as-yet unsolved problems.

She [Lucy] tried to open it but couldn't at first; this, however, was only because it was fastened by two leaden clasps, and when she had undone these it opened easily enough. And what a book it was! (ch. 10)

Friendship arises out of mere companionship when two or more of the companions discover that they have in common some insight or interest or even taste which the others do not share and which, till that moment, each believed to be his own unique treasure (or burden). The typical expression of opening Friendship would be something like, 'What? You too? I thought I was the only one.'

I have come to believe that this is a mighty continent which was hitherto unknown. I am greatly supported in this view by reason of this great river, and by this sea which is fresh.

What a pity, when Christopher Columbus discovered America, that he ever mentioned it.

We shall be inclined to pronounce the voyage that led to the way to this New World as the most epoch-making event of all that have occurred since the birth of Christ.

He gave the world another world.

The act of writing is the act of discovering what you believe.

What do I miss? Second-hand bookshops where I can find things I had no idea I wanted. AbeBooks helps, but it doesn't have that smell.

Oh the things you can find If you don't stay behind!

To find everything profound - that is an inconvenient trait. It makes one strain one's eyes all the time, and in the end one finds more than one might have wished.

All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered; the point is to discover them.

'Boss, I think I've found you a genius.' (The telegram sent to Manchester United manager Sir Matt Busby by talent scout Bob Bishop, who discovered a 15-year-old Best playing for Cregagh Boys' Club.)

The Microbe is so very small You cannot make him out at all, But many sanguine people hope To see him through a microscope.

So much has already been written about everything that you can't find out anything about it.

O my America! my new-found land.

All human discoveries seem to be made only for the purpose of confirming more and more strongly the truths that come on high and are contained in the sacred writings.

I never really had an interest in it in the beginning. Nicolas Cage -we had some mutual friends - introduced me to his agent. She sent me to a casting director, and I auditioned for the first Nightmare on Elm Street. I got the job. I was stupefied. They paid me all that money for a week. It was luck, and accident. I did it purely to pay the rent. I was literally filling out job applications at the time, any kind of job. Nic Cage said, ' You should try being an actor. Maybe you are one and don't know it.' I began acting, and I thought, Well, this is an interesting road; maybe I should keep traveling on it. I didn't know what the hell I was doing, so I started to read everything about acting-Stanislavsky, Uta Hagen, Michael Chekhov. I started soaking it up.

Dorothy looked, and gave a little cry of fright. There, indeed, just under the corner of the great beam the house rested on, two feet were sticking out, shod in silver shoes with pointed toes.

Dans les champs de l'observation le hasard ne favorise que les esprits prepares.

He who wonders discovers that this in itself is wonder.

The glorious years of discovery in radio astronomy in the Cavendish Laboratory, Cambridge were dominated by the personality of Martin Ryle.

How wonderful that we have met with a paradox. Now we have some hope of making progress.

Just before twenty-first March, 1953, seven days before, I stopped working on myself. A moment comes when you see the whole futility of effort. You have done all that you can do and nothing is happening. You have done all that is humanly possible. Then what else can you do? In sheer helplessness one drops all search. And the day the search stopped, the day I was not seeking for something, the day I was not expecting something to happen, it started happening. A new energy arose - out of nowhere. It was not coming from any source. It was coming from nowhere and everywhere. It was in the trees and in the rocks and the sky and the sun and the air - it was everywhere. And I was seeking so hard, and I was thinking it is very far away. And it was so near and so close.

Yo no busco, yo encuentro.

When we discovered Cubism, we did not have the aim of discovering Cubism. We only wanted to express that which was within us.

The long chains of simple and easy reasonings by means of which geometers are accustomed to reach the conclusions of their most difficult demonstrations, had led me to imagine that all things, to the knowledge of which man is competent, are mutually connected in the same way, and that there is nothing so far removed from us as to be beyond our reach, or so hidden that we cannot discover it, provided only we abstain from accepting the false for the true, and always preserve in our thoughts the order necessary for the deduction of one truth from another.

So blind is the curiosity by which mortals are possessed, that they often conduct their minds along unexplored routes, having no reason to hope for success, but merely being willing to risk the experiment of finding whether the truth they seek lies there.

If I found any new truths in the sciences, I can say that they follow from, or depend on, five or six principal problems which I succeeded in solving and which I regard as so many battles where the fortunes of war were on my side.

The bones of the Sophists long ago turned to dust and what they said turned to dust with them and the dust was buried under the rubble of declining Athens through its fall and Macedonia through its decline and fall. Through the decline and death of ancient Rome and Byzantium and the Ottoman Empire and the modern states... buried so deep and with such ceremoniousness and such unction and such evil that only a madman centuries later could discover the clues needed to uncover them, and see with horror what had been done.

Something hidden. Go and find it. Go and look behin the Ranges - Something lost behind the Ranges. Lost and waiting for you. Go!

But you I never understood, Your spirit's secret hides like gold Sunk in a Spanish galleon Ages ago in waters cold.

Science condemns itself to failure when, yielding to the infatuation of the serious, it aspires to attain being, to contain it, and to possess it; but it finds its truth if it considers itself as a free engagement of thought in the given, aiming, at each discovery, not at fusion with the thing, but at the possibility of new discoveries; what the mind then projects is the concrete accomplishment of its freedom.

Jordy Verrill: [upon first viewing the meteor] Whoo! I be dipped in hogshit if that ain't a meteor!

Through all the years of experimenting and research, I never once made a discovery. I start where the last man left off. ... All my work was deductive, and the results I achieved were those of invention pure and simple.

The deepest pleasure in science comes from finding an instantiation, a home, for some deeply felt, deeply held image.

The Purpose of Life is Religious Discovery

Find first, seek later.