Quotes About Discovery

In the morning, fog. As it slowly lifted, the expedition set off.

and see a fire burning in town.

there is no reason why anyone should understand how it works… and of course no reason why anyone should care … unless you are curious, in which case I love you, for curiosity about the world and all its corners is a beautiful thing.

Christmas to a child is the first terrible proof that to travel hopefully is better than to arrive.

He had quickly happened upon the truth which many lonely contemporaries would never discover, the truth that everybody, simply everybody, was panting for it and could, with patience, be shown that they were panting for it. So Adrian grabbed what was to hand and had the time of his life genitally - focusing exclusively on his own gender of course, for this was 1973 and girls had not yet been invented.

You will not find the truth but the truth will find you,' 'Seek not to know, but know to seek,' 'You don't make mistakes, mistakes make you

But this is England, where the only crime is to be Found Out.

That's how they were supposed to be. It's what they, at fifteen, were supposed to have been doing. They'd been fired into adolescence and were swerving to each side now like crazy, trying to find the straight and narrow.

To confine our attention to terrestrial matters would be to limit the human spirit.

If aliens ever visit us, I think the outcome would be much as when Christopher Columbus first landed in America, which didn't turn out very well for the Native Americans.

We each exist for but a short time, and in that time explore but a small part of the whole universe

Today will still yearn to know why we are here and where we came from. Humanity's deepest desire for knowledge is justification enough for our continuing quest. And our goal is nothing less than a complete description of the universe we live in.

The universe does not behave according to our pre-conceived ideas. It continues to surprise us.

I have spent my life travelling across the universe, inside my mind.

I am just a child who has never grown up. I still keep asking these 'how' and 'why' questions. Occasionally, I find an answer.

In his eyes shone the reflection of the most beautiful planet in the Universe---a planet that is not too hot and not too cold; that has liquid water on the surface and where the gravity is just right for human beings and the atmosphere is perfect for them to breathe; where there are mountains and deserts and oceans and islands and forests and trees and birds and plants and animals and insects and people---lots and lots of people. Where there is life. Some of it, possibly, intelligent.

Each exists for but a short time, and in that time explore but a small part of the whole universe.

Traditionally these are questions for philosophy, but philosophy is dead. Philosophy has not kept up with modern developments in science, particularly physics. Scientists have become the bearers of the torch of discovery in our quest for knowledge.

As often happens in science, discoveries are made in the pursuit of an elusive (and sometimes nonexistent) goal.

And one final point—we never really know where the next great scientific discovery will come from, nor who will make it. Opening up the thrill and wonder of scientific discovery, creating innovative and accessible ways to reach out to the widest young audience possible, greatly increases the chances of finding and inspiring the new Einstein. Wherever she might be.

We have developed from the geocentric cosmologies of Ptolemy and his forebears, through the heliocentric cosmology of Copernicus and Galileo, to the modern picture in which the earth is a medium-sized planet orbiting around an average star in the outer suburbs of an ordinary spiral galaxy, which is itself only one of about a million million galaxies in the observable universe.

The discovery that the universe was expanding was one of the great intellectual revolutions of the twentieth century.

the most important point: that the universe is governed by a set of rational laws that we can discover and understand.

Science is not only a disciple of reason but, also, one of romance and passion.