Discovery quotes
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"New generations of humans inherit the acquired discoveries of generations past, allowing cosmic insight to accumulate without limit. Each discovery of science therefore adds a rung to a ladder of knowledge whose end is not in sight because we are building the ladder as we go along. As far as I can tell, as we assemble and ascend this ladder, we will forever uncover the secrets of the universe - one by one."
"The idea that God resides in the unknown is what philosophers call the God of the gaps. And we have this thing called science, which marches on and makes discoveries in those gaps, ultimately closing gaps."
"I would rather enlighten the electorate so that when it's time for them to put somebody in Congress, it will be self-evident that they will embrace the message and tools and discovery of science in a way that can transform our culture and even our civilization."
"There's no denying the public's appetite for cosmic discovery."
"You could be a poet, an artist, a comedian - if you're in the culture of innovation then you embrace those who do and you're going to protect the science curriculum in the classroom because you understand the meaning and the value of it. And science discoveries don't scare you. You say, "Give me more science", not less. "Give me more technology", not less."
"The discovery of any kind of life [in Space] at all would be a tremendous watershed moment in biology, as well as all of science."
"I don't have specific television ambitions in the sense that I remain fundamentally and academic, and so, my innermost ambitions are what's the next discovery I can make; that's in my direct center."
"I'd go back and hang out with Isaac Newton. I'm torn between do I hang out with him or do I bring him into the present to hang out with me. See, that might be terrifying because his head will just explode once he sees everything that was derived from his discoveries, but I'd spend more time with someone who I think is one of the most brilliant minds our species has ever known."
"The trend lines in research and innovation look good for places such as India and China and less good for America as we go forward. So even if you're not enchanted by the prospect of cosmic discovery, the prospect of dying poor may be what it takes to understand the role of this adventure in the future of the natural world in which we live."
"There are and can be only two ways of searching into and discovering truth. The one flies from the senses and particulars to the most general axioms, and from these principles, the truth of which it takes for settled and immovable, proceeds to judgment and to the discovery of middle axioms. And this way is now in fashion. The other derives axioms from the senses and particulars, rising by a gradual and unbroken ascent, so that it arrives at the most general axioms last of all. This is the true way, but as yet untried."
"...neither is it possible to discover the more remote and deeper parts of any science, if you stand but upon the level of the same science, and ascend not to a higher science."
"Physicians, when the cause of disease is discovered, consider that the cure is discovered."
"Whatever discoveries we may have made in the regions of self-love, there still remain many unknown lands."
"If you would stick to the concrete, and put your discoveries in the form of entertaining anecdotes about your adventures with women, your conversation would be easier to follow."
"Education can and should do much influence social, moral and intellectual discovery by stimulating critical attitudes of thought in the young"
"and we must learn to accommodate ourselves to the discovery that some of those cunningly-fashioned instruments called human souls have only a very limited range of music, and will not vibrate in the least under a touch that fills others with tremulous rapture or quivering agony."
"We are all humiliated by the sudden discovery of a fact which has existed very comfortably and perhaps been staring at us in private while we have been making up our world entirely without it."
"The pace of discovery is going unbelievably fast."
"For, when you are approaching poverty, you make one discovery which outweighs some of the others. You discover boredom and mean complications and the beginnings of hunger, but you also discover the great redeeming feature of poverty: the fact that it annihilates the future. Within certain limits, it is actually true that the less money you have, the less you worry."
"The education of this president [Obama] is a protracted and often amusing process . . . as he continues to alight upon the obvious with a sense of profound and original discovery."
