Quotes About Discovery

Water-based life is very much an Earth-centric view, and we can push the envelope on that here in our own solar system. We have the methane seas of Titan.

I'd love to go into space again if there were a mission to Mars. I'd also love to go to a completely different planetary system, out of our solar system.

We go to learn about our solar system, to search for life, and to understand what happened to Mars so we avoid it ourselves.

Because Alpha Centauri is so close, it is our first stop outside our solar system. There's almost certain to be small, rocky planets around Alpha Centauri A and B.

Before 1995, the only planets we knew about were the planets in our solar system.

We've explored every type of environment in the solar system at least once.

The geysering on Enceladus is the most astonishing phenomenon we have in our solar system.

Small bodies in our solar system, like comets and asteroids, help us understand how the solar system formed and provide opportunities to advance exploration.

Hubble wasn't designed to look at objects in our solar system, but after it was launched, astronomers realized that with just a little bit of modification to the software, it could look at solar system objects.

I know that I derive the same kind of spiritual fulfillment from what I do, being a planetary scientist, seeing our exploration of the solar system come to fruition. I get such a spiritual high from it that I don't even see the need for religion.

Well, it was kind of an accident, because plastic is not what I meant to invent. I had just sold photograph paper to Eastman Kodak for 1 million dollars.

When I first heard Ray Charles, he was a flop artist on a small label in California. He hadn't sold any records. And I bought his contract for $2,500.

My movies continue to be found and be sold because there's something going on in them.

The music sold itself before anybody knew who I was.

It's interesting for me to sell Comme des Garcons in places it's never been sold before to people who might not have heard of Comme des Garcons.

What I discovered is that there has always been a soldier inside me; I just didn't know it.

When I was ten, I did a play at the Henry Street Settlement Playhouse, Charles Fuller's first play. He went on to write 'A Soldier's Story,' among other things. I realized, 'Oh, I can be anything doing this.'

I did this whole series on the buffalo soldiers-on black soldiers-I did another series on black cowboys, and I presented myself to the gallery system, and all these people with these massive collections didn't know there were black cowboys or black soldiers. I ended up hitting a niche I didn't know was there.

Fundamental research is needed to make progress, which you cannot do solely by copying others. If you only do applied research, you quickly lose creativity.

The Nobel Prize, so long regarded in our science as the highest reward a man's work can earn, must bring to its recipient a most solemn sense of his debt to his fellow scientists and those of the past.

I have found that hollow, which even I had relied on for solid.

The nice thing about asteroids is that once you've found them, and once you have a good solid orbit on them, you can predict a hundred years ahead of time whether there is a likelihood of an impact with Earth.

Actually, when I was in elementary school, I saw a saxophone. A band came to my school, and I saw this guy get up and play this solo. And I said, 'Oh man, what is that! That must be fantastic!'

Looking back, I realize that nurturing curiosity and the instinct to seek solutions are perhaps the most important contributions education can make.