Quotes About Discovery

Quantum theory had the strangest genesis," Ball says. "Its pioneers made it up as they went along. What else could they do?

Scientists, according to [Francis] Bacon, should not be like ants, busy doing mindless practical tasks, nor like spiders, weaving tenuous philosophical webs, but like bees, mining nature for her goodness and using it to make useful things.

The ultimate goal of science is uncertainty's total eradication.

You assume you know your home. It's only when you return that you realise how strange it is.

On the other side is chaos, libertinism, vice, danger and the unknown. And the unknown will always remain so to those who do not choose to explore it.

For the unholy trinity of Bobs: Bloch, Heinlein, and Traurig— may I meet them on the banks of The River, where we'll board the fabulous Riverboat

hence the very best science fiction ultimately winds up being a collaboration between author and reader, in which both create - and enjoy it; joy is the essential and final ingredient of science fiction, the joy of discovery of newness

They ought to make it a binding clause that if you find God you get to keep Him.

It isn't a brute instinct that keeps us restless and dissatisfied. I'll tell you what it is: it's the highest goal of man - the need to grow and advance . . . to find new things . . . to expand. To spread out, reach areas, experiences, comprehend and live in an evolving fashion. To push aside routine and repetition, to break out of mindless monotony and thrust forward. To keep moving on . . .

And yet, even if one person finds his way … that means there is a Way. Even if I personally fail to reach it.

Even if all life on our planet is destroyed, there must be other life somewhere which we know nothing of. It is impossible that ours is the only world; there must be world after world unseen by us, in some region or dimension that we simply do not percieve.

So you want to have gone to Mars. Very good.

I've never found a live, wild animal. It must be a fantastic experience to look down and see something living scuttling along. Maybe it'll happen someday to me like it did him.

It is therapeutic to meet these people who have intimidated you. And to discover what they are really like. Then the intimidation goes.

Truth, she thought. As terrible as death. But harder to find. I'm

One seeks to contravene one's perceptions - why? So that one can wander utterly lost, without signposts or guide?

A man driven by rage may stumble, in his passion, onto truth.

I had a lot of fears that the universe would discover just how different I was from it.

No es un instinto animal lo que nos hace sentirnos insatisfechos. Les diré lo que es: la aspiración más alta del hombre, la necesidad de crecer y progresar..., de encontrar cosas nuevas..., horizontes nuevos. De extenderse y conquistar nuevos territorios, nuevas experiencias; de comprender y vivir en una evolución permanente. De dejar de lado la rutina y la repetición, de romper la insensata monotonía de la costumbre e ir adelante, y no detenerse...

Even if one person finds a way, it means there is a way.

We're all going to be little brown gophers. We'll all have to learn to dig down in the rubble and find the good things, because that's where they'll be.

Needless to say, the realization had never penetrated to Fat's mind that Sherri sought out this kind of abode. Her dingy surroundings came as a result of her affliction, not as a cause; she could recreate these conditions wherever she went—which Fat eventually discovered.

So now we know the truth', Al said. 'Is it the truth?' Al said, 'Sure. Obviously.' 'What a hell of a way to learn it. From the wall of a men's room.' He felt bitter resentment rather than anything else. 'That's how graffiti is; harsh and direct.

We are, Adams realized, a cursed race. Genesis is right; there is a stigma on us, a mark. Because only a cursed, marked, flawed species would use its discoveries as we are using them.