Quotes About Discovery

Opportunity becomes invisible to those who are doing nothing, or looking somewhere else for it.

Columbus was carried back to Spain in chains, and a pickle dealer of Seville, who never rose above the position of mate of a schooner, gave his name to the world Columbus had discovered.

Phillips Brooks used to say that after a man has once discovered that he has been living but a half-life the other half will haunt him until he releases it, and he never again will be content to live a half-life.

It is in the turmoil of chaos that we discover what, if anything, we are.

I looked for perfection, and I found something better.

You can't rule out the impossible, because you never know which of your assumptions about what was possible might turn out, in the real universe, to be false.

For the first time in his life, a teacher was pointing out things that Ender had not already seen for himself. For the first time, Ender had found a living mind he could admire.

And always Ender carried with him a dry white cocoon, looking for a place where the hive-queen could awaken and thrive in peace. He looked a long time.

Others find humanity by looking in their own hearts. Only lost souls need to search for it outside themselves.

You deplore what I did, but you still want to know the results of my research.

That was Ender's gift to us, to free us from the illusion that any one explanation will ever contain the final answer for all time, for all hearers. There is always, always more to learn.

I've thought of all the questions, said Father. That only means you've stopped trying to think of new ones.

He was discovered with his feet stuck to the ceiling in the bathroom with his head stuffed in the toilet...

What I depend on is a vigorous audience that can discover sweetness and light, beauty and truth, beyond the ability of the artist, on his own, to create them.

No one likes to find out that the story he always believed about his own identity is false.

If our systems should fail, we would faithfully report the fact. We have no ego-protection that would cause us to deceive you or ourselves. Whereasyou are engaged in ego-protection right now. You thought you would be necessary during the voyage, and you now discover that you were not. This makes you feel bad.

we have some good ideas here. But the only way to know if they're workable is to try to make them fail. If we fail to fail, then maybe we're on the right track.

he would have been lost except he started out lost and when you start out completely lost, it's hard to get loster.

Never take another human being to the third life, because we don't know how to go.

I believe, when it comes to storytelling ... that mistakes are often the beginning of the best ideas. After all, a mistake wasn't planned. It can't be a cliché. All you have to do is think of a reason why the mistake isn't a mistake at all, and you might have something fresh and wonderful, something to stimulate a story you never thought of quite that way before.

Who but the adolescent is free to have the adventures that most of us are looking for when we turn to storytellers to satisfy our hunger?

From you I can learn things that nobody knows.

I don't know what's going on in the world, he said. Everything seemed so reasonable and scientific until I discovered my son was a fraud with the ability to hide my own memories from me. And now you come along. The captain at the gate told me you were executed and buried yesterday. He spoke to you? He didn't say a word to me, I said. Don't change the subject, young man. I'm accusing you of violating the laws of nature. Nature's virtue is intact. I just know some different laws.

They gave us the stardrive we used to get to them, and the weapon we used to kill them. They gave us everything.