Quotes About Exploration

They had emerged, abruptly and conclusively, from Glenwood Canyon and come out into a more open valley containing the crossroads town of Glenwood Springs. From here a highway doubled back east toward the elite paradise of Aspen. Travelers who, like them, chose to continue west toward Utah were confronted by an animated mushroom cloud rising from the interstate's median.

pauses for a moment to get the answer queued up in his output buffer.

That's the thing about space," she said. "So many smart people are so interested in it that it's difficult to come up with a really new idea.

Besides, interesting things happen along borders—transitions—not in the middle where everything is the same. There may be something happening along the border of the crowd, back where the lights fade into the shade of the overpass.

An overnight train ride delivered him to Persia, his 153rd country, where he drank beer for breakfast and began mapping a route home.

Each event and adventure is called to your Self by your Self in order that you might create and experience Who You Really Are.

Right now your schools exist primarily to provide answers. It would be far more beneficial if their primary function was to ask questions. What does it mean to be honest, or responsible, or "fair"? What are the implications? For that matter, what does it mean that 2+2=4? What are the implications? Highly evolved societies encourage all children to discover and create those answers for themselves.

Sometimes when you open a book, time stops.

My brain was all right back then; it didn't get stuck in ruts.

And I'm not assuming and I'm not judging. I'm just being curious.

I've started to think it must just be chemistry, in which case we're looking for the Shift and we haven't found it yet.

SUICIDAL IDEATION. That would be a good band name, I think.

Good. Because right now I don't have you pegged as a yuppie. You're something else. I'm not sure what you are, but I'm going to find out." "Cool.

I would teach how science works as much as I would teach what science knows. I would assert (given that essentially, everyone will learn to read) that science literacy is the most important kind of literacy they can take into the 21st century. I would undervalue grades based on knowing things and find ways to reward curiosity. In the end, it's the people who are curious who change the world.

Where ignorance lurks, so too do the frontiers of discovery and imagination

People who believe they are ignorant of nothing have neither looked for, nor stumbled upon, the boundary between what is known and unknown in the universe.

I love the smell of the universe in the morning.

Scientific inquiry shouldn't stop just because a reasonable explanation has apparently been found.

Doing what has never been done before is intellectually seductive, whether or not we deem it practical.

Science is a philosophy of discovery. Intelligent design is a philosophy of ignorance.

Robots are important also. If I don my pure-scientist hat, I would say just send robots; I'll stay down here and get the data. But nobody's ever given a parade for a robot. Nobody's ever named a high school after a robot. So when I don my public-educator hat, I have to recognize the elements of exploration that excite people. It's not only the discoveries and the beautiful photos that come down from the heavens; it's the vicarious participation in discovery itself.

Still, our knowledge of the planets was meager, and where ignorance lurks, so too do the frontiers of discovery and imagination.

Without a doubt, the most spectacular way to die in space is to fall into a black hole.

And yes, every one of our body's atoms is traceable to the big bang and to the thermonuclear furnaces within high-mass stars that exploded more than five billion years ago. We are stardust brought to life, then empowered by the universe to figure itself out - and we have only just begun.