Quotes About Discovery

Creativity is a central source of meaning in our lives… most of the things that are interesting, important, and human are the results of creativity… [and] when we are involved in it, we feel that we are living more fully than during the rest of life.

Albert Einstein once wrote that art and science are two of the greatest forms of escape from reality that humans have devised.

Scientists often describe the autotelic aspects of their work as the exhilaration that comes from the pursuit of truth and of beauty. What they seem to describe, however, is the joy of discovery, of solving a problem, of being able to express an observed relationship in a simple and elegant form. So what is rewarding is not a mysterious and ineffable goal but the activity of science itself. It is the pursuit that counts, not the attainment.

The real story of creativity is more difficult and strange than many overly optimistic accounts have claimed.

Edison's or Einstein's discoveries would be inconceivable without the prior knowledge, without the intellectual and social network that stimulated their thinking, and without the social mechanisms that recognized and spread their innovations.

To say that the theory of relativity was created by Einstein is like saying that it is the spark that is responsible for the fire. The spark is necessary, but without air and tinder there would be no flame.

Great art and great science involve a leap of imagination into a world that is different from the present.

If one reads the biographies of physicists like Bohr, Heisenberg, Chandrashekhar, and Bethe, one gets the impression that without hikes in the mountains and the vision of night skies their science would not have amounted to much.

Pluto is dead.

Finding out that something you have just discovered is considered all but impossible is one of the joys of science.

I had a hunch. Officially, scientists don't work on hunches. We work on hypotheses and observations and plenty of evidence. Hunches don't get you research funding, tenure at your university, or access to the world's largest telescopes. But a hunch was all I had.

In 1997 I began working as an assistant professor at Caltech, and I realized that I didn't really know what I was doing.

After 'cat', Lilah next learned 'flower'. Flowers (scrunch up nose as if sniffing) were everywhere, first only outside on plants, but soon she generalized to flowers on her clothes or her shoes, or in pictures in books and magazines. I wanted to hook up wires and do experiments and comparisons and studies to understand it all. 'You want to do what?' Diane would say. But really, who wouldn't?

Finding something spherical in space indicates that you have found a place where gravity has taken over.

But figuring out where to point the telescopes in the first place and why you're doing it is much harder.

The world is a book. Some words stand out from the page.

In order to find yourself you need to get lost in the forest of life.

We all have a path to take; sometimes it's hidden under the weeds, so you might have to work a little.

You are ultimately destined to discover your power and accept its responsibilities,

the journey from knowing into unknowing into knowing that you call

By accepting or even welcoming your challenges, you create opportunities for their gifts to be revealed.

accepting personal responsibility for everything you experience is critical to ultimately discovering your power,

Rising suns and babbling brooks. Tropical forests and sleeping meadows. Modern marvels and scientific breakthroughs. Exciting discoveries and limitless frontiers. Devoted friends and caring strangers. Lives and loves and souls to hold so close, your heart could burst . . .

On the occasions fear or worry overcome you, relax! I used to panic whenever negativity coursed through my mind, thinking I was doomed because of this principle of thoughts become things, but I discovered something long ago when I thought I was being fired at PW: while there are indeed times in all our lives when we simply cannot stop our runaway trains of fear or negativity, at all times we are free and able to simultaneously start a new train running.