Quotes About Exploration

From the freedom to explore comes the joy of learning. From knowledge acquired by personal initiative arises the desire for more knowledge. And from mastery of the novel and beautiful world awaiting every child comes self-confidence. The growth of a naturalist is like the growth of a musician or athlete: excellence for the talented, lifelong enjoyment for the rest, benefit for humanity.

Science owns the warrant to explore everything deemed factual and possible, but the humanities, borne aloft by both fact and fantasy, have the power of everything not only possible but also conceivable.

Annie Dillard was a pioneer in her Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, which won a Pulitzer Prize in 1974. Among other notable examples are David M. Carroll's Following the Water: A Hydromancer's Notebook (2009); David George Haskell's The Forest Unseen (2012); and Dave Goulson's A Buzz in the Meadow: The Natural History of a French Farm (2015).

I am now convinced that it is better to work from science into literature than to try the reverse, though many have done so with distinction. To understand the scientific culture deeply and, even more, to express the emotions that attend scientific exploration require that the writer inhabit science for a substantial part of his life, intent upon making important discoveries and placing them within the canon.

ALMOST ALL MY LIFE I HAVE DREAMED OF THE TROPICS. MY fantasies drifted far beyond the benign temperate zone of Thoreau and Muir.

For every problem in a given discipline of science, there exists a species or other entity or phenomenon ideal for its solution. (Example: a kind of mollusk, Aplysia, proved ideal for exploring the cellular base of memory.) Conversely, for very species or other entity or phenomenon, there exist important problems for the solution of which it is ideally suited. (Example: bats were logical for the discovery of sonar.)

An estimated hundred billion star systems make up the Milky Way galaxy, and astronomers believe that all are orbited by an average of at least one planet.

Writers of Earth-invader science fiction, please remember to provide all your aliens with soft grasping hands or tentacles or some other fleshy fat appendages.)

Would the humanities care to colonize the sciences?

The unknown and prodigious are drugs to the scientific imagination, stirring insatiable hunger with a single taste.

The longing for odysseys and faraway adventure is in our genes.

To explore and affiliate with life is a deep and complicated process in mental development. To an extent still undervalued in philosophy and religion, our existence depends on this propensity, our spirit is woven from it hope rises on its currents.

Whoever created the world went to a lot of trouble. It would be downright rude not to go out and see as much of it as possible.

When a voyager begins a journey, he prepares his ship, decides upon his course and sets sail. What else can he do? But he cannot know the outcome – what storms may arise, what new lands he may find, or whether or not he will return. That is destiny, and you must accept it. Never think you can escape destiny.

There is nothing at the end of any road better than may be found beside it.

Imagination is the vehicle for the soul.

Anything more than 500 yds from the car just isn't photogenic.

My own eyes are no more than scouts on a preliminary search, for the camera's eye may entirely change my idea.

As for the forces, electromagnetism and gravity we experience in everyday life. But the weak and strong forces are beyond our ordinary experience. So in physics, lots of the basic building blocks take 20th- or perhaps 21st-century equipment to explore.

Away from the safety of your home, the universe was not made for your convenience.

The hardest part of research is always to find a question that's big enough that it's worth answering, but little enough that you actually can answer it.

Shall any gazer see with mortal eyes, Or any searcher know by mortal mind, Veil after veil will lift--but there must be Veil upon veil behind.

A man to match the mountains and the sea.

I take my journey back to seek my kindred,Old founts dried up whose rivers run far onThrough you and me.