Quotes About Discovery

Is it not at least occasionally the case that we set out on a clear and simple mission and return with something undreamed of? Whether or not we accomplish our original intention becomes unimportant.

personal confusion, search, and self-interrogation are more important than any answers could ever be.

On December 17, 1903, on a windy North Carolina beach for just shy of one hundred seconds, the Wright brothers demonstrated that a heavier-than-air, self-propelled vehicle could fly. The moment was electric and its importance widely understood. Almost immediately, there was an explosion of interest in this newfound technology of manned flight, and a gaggle of innovators began to build upon it.

Steve once told me that the gestation of great products takes much longer than it appears. What seems to emerge from nowhere belies a long process of development, trials, and missteps.

Lack of comfort means we are on the threshold of new insights.

I don't mind not knowing. It doesn't scare me. —RICHARD FEYNMAN

Edwin Hubble, who continues to give me great faith in humanity, because he started out as a lawyer and then became an astronomer.

the history of science cannot be written by pulling scientific 'firsts' out of their historical context, but only by seeing with eyes and minds of our historical characters.

have lifted the window-well grate and climbed through the broken window to the basement and still leave a

A library is not to be read completely, but to be consulted. Here there are books which are around just in case. I have read all my life, but there are many things about which I know nothing. What's important is not to have everything in one's head but to know where to find it. The difference between someone who's vain and someone who's wise is that the vain man only appreciates what he already knows, and the wise man searches for what he doesn't yet know.

In the case of the SF genre, the basic rule was, is, and always has been: Come up with a startling idea and set it loose in astonishing ways in a future world.

In a sense, all fiction is experimental. Every new book is an adventure into unknown territory. As Hemingway told us, you (the writer) have to go out beyond where you have gone before.

Music is the doorway that has led me to drawing, photography, and writing.

No man had ever heard a nightingale, When once a keen-eyed naturalist was stirred To study and define -- what is a bird.

You can go home again ... so long as you understand that home is a place where you have never been.

The explorer who will not come back or send back his ships to tell his tale is not an explorer, only an adventurer; and his sons are born in exile.

Well, we think that time "passes," flows past us, but what if it is we who move forward, from past to future, always discovering the new? It would be a little like reading a book, you see. The book is all there, all at once, between its covers. But if you want to read the story and understand it, you must begin with the first page, and go forward, always in order. So the universe would be a very great book, and we would be very small readers.

Living, being in the world, was a much greater and stranger thing than she had ever dreamed.

When it comes to 'Glee ' I feel like I've been in a relationship, and now I can mingle a bit.

Both of them had this ability to—well, not invent products—but discover products. Both of them said these products have always existed, it's just that no one has ever seen them before. We were the ones who discovered them. The Polaroid camera always existed and the Macintosh always existed. It's a matter of discovery

being excited about being wrong because that means you've discovered something new.

it's in those early stages when you're still very open to exploration, that you find opportunities.

Nobody ever understands what a pioneer is doing.

[Children are] like talking animals. Their consciousness is so different from ours that they constitute a different species. They don't have to be particularly interesting children; just the fact that they are children is sufficient. They don't know what anything is, so they have to make it up. No matter how dull they are, they still have to figure things out for themselves.