Friday, 8 June 2012

Discovery - Quotes

A discovery is said to be an accident meeting a prepared mind. - Albert Von Szent-Gyorgyi

A professor can never better distinguish himself in his work than by encouraging a clever pupil, for the true discoverers are among them, as comets amongst the stars. - Henry Brooks Adams

A single discovery within a lifetime is a very remarkable thing. Two over the course of a career – why, you’d be very lucky indeed. - Alan Toomre

All great discoveries are made by men whose feelings run ahead of their thinking. - Charles Henry Parkhurst 

All we discover has been with us since the sun began to roll; and much we discover, is not worth the discovering. - Herman Melville

Although there are discoveries which are said to have been made by accident, if carefully inquired into, it will be found that there has really been very little that was accidental about them. For the most part, these so-called accidents have only been opportunities, carefully improved by genius. As time goes on, new and remoter aspects of truth are discovered, which can seldom or never be fitted into creeds that are changeless. - Clarence Day

Before you discover, you must explore. - Unknown

Discoveries are always accidental; and the great use of science is by investigating the nature of the effects produced by any process or contrivance, and of the causes by which they are brought about, to explain the operation and determine the precise value of every new invention. These fixes as it were the latitude and longitude of each discovery, and enables us to place it in that part of the map of human knowledge which it ought to occupy. It likewise enables us to use it in taking bearings and distances, and in shaping our course when we go in search of new discoveries. - Benjamin Graf von Rumford

Discoveries are often made by not following instructions, by going off the main road, by trying the untried. - Unknown

Discovery consists of seeing what everybody has seen and thinking what nobody has thought. - Dr. Albert Szebt-Gyorgyi

Discovery follows discovery, each both raising and answering questions, each enduring a long search, and each providing the new instruments for a new search. - Robert Oppenheimer

Discovery is a two-track process: on one track, we discover places or things or people; on the other track, we discover our own selves. The two tracks are interconnected: our discovery in the external world helps us discover hitherto unknown elements in our internal world, and with a new understanding of our inner self, we discover further possibilities in the external world. These two tracks thus support and reinforce each other. - Unknown

Discovery is the ability to be puzzled by simple things. - Noam Chomsky

Everything that we call Invention or Discovery in the higher sense of the word is the serious exercise and activity of an original feeling for truth, which, after a long course of silent cultivation, suddenly flashes out into fruitful knowledge. - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Fertility of imagination and abundance of guesses at the truth are among the first requisites of discovery. - William Jevons

Great discoveries and improvements invariably involve the cooperation of many minds. I may be given credit for having blazed the trail, but when I look at the subsequent developments I feel the credit is due to others rather than myself. - Alexander Graham Bell

History shows that new discoveries are always just over the horizon. - Harry Levine

I never made one of my discoveries through the process of rational thinking. - Albert Einstein

I invent nothing. I rediscover. - Auguste Rodin

If I have ever made any valuable discoveries, it has been owing more to patient attention than to any other talent. - Isaac Newton

It is a mortifying truth, and ought to teach the wisest of us humility, that many of the most valuable discoveries have been the result of chance, rather than of contemplation, and of accident rather than of design. - Charles Caleb Colton

It is strange that only extraordinary men make the discoveries, which later appear so easy and simple. - Georg C. Lichtenberg

Man has gone out to explore other worlds and other civilizations without having explored his own labyrinth of dark passages and secret chambers, and without finding what lies behind doorways that he himself has sealed. - Stanislaw Lem

Most new discoveries are suddenly-seen things that were always there. - Susan Langer

New discoveries require us to think differently and approach things differently, to think anew. - Tom Vilsack

No great discovery was ever made without a bold guess. - Isaac Newton

No one ever made a great discovery without the exercise of the imagination. - George Henry Lewes

Often, in great discovery the most important thing is that a certain question is found. - Max Wertheimer

One discovers how far one can go only by travelling in a straight line until one is stopped. - Norman Mailer

One does not discover new lands without consenting to lose sight of the shore for a very long time. - Andre Gide

The great obstacle to discovery is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge. - Daniel J. Boorstin

One of the advantages to being disorderly is that one is constantly making exciting discoveries. - A. A. Milne

One of the greatest discoveries a man makes, one of his great surprises, is to find he can do what he was afraid he couldn’t do. - Henry Ford

Sometimes a clearly defined error is the only way to discover the truth. - Benjamin Wiker

The discovery of truth is prevented more effectively, not by the false appearance things present and which mislead into error, not directly by weakness of the reasoning powers, but by preconceived opinion, by prejudice. - Arthur Schopenhauer

The fall of the apple at Newton's feet has often been quoted in proof of the accidental character of some discoveries. But Newton's whole mind had already been devoted for years to the laborious and patient investigation of the subject of gravitation; and the circumstance of the apple falling before his eyes was suddenly apprehended only as genius could apprehend it, and served to flash upon him the brilliant discovery then opening to his sight. - Samuel Smiles

The greatest discovery of my generation is that human beings can alter their lives by altering their attitudes of mind. - William James

The greatest discoveries are usually owing to hints given by others whose names are forgot. - Alban Butler

The greatest obstacle to discovering the shape of the earth, its continents, and the ocean was not ignorance but the illusion of knowledge. - Daniel Boorstin

The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance – it is the illusion of knowledge. - Daniel J. Boorstin

The knack of discovery requires that one be ready to abandon any fixed notion so that a more comprehensive view, a deeper experience of realization, can take its place. - Unknown

The intellect has little to do on the road to discovery. There comes a leap in consciousness, call it intuition or what you will, and the solution comes to you and you don't know how or why. - Albert Einstein

The most important of my discoveries have been suggested to me by my failures. - Humphrey Davy

The most valuable discoveries have found their origin in the most trivial accidents. - Pliny

The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible. - Arthur C. Clarke

The real voyage of discovery consists in not seeing new landscapes, but in having new eyes. - Mike Lancelot

The voyage of discovery is not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes. - Marcel Proust

There are ill discoverers that think there is no land, when they can see nothing but sea. - Francis Bacon

There are, and in our nature there ever must be, a diversity of opinions and affections. Experience seems to teach, that in the society where these are most freely expressed – where men most freely emulate each other in endeavours to promote their favourite views – the greatest discoveries are made, and the greatest actions are performed. - George Oliver

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. - George Eliot

We often discover what will do, by finding out what will not do; and probably he who never made a mistake never made a discovery. - Samuel Smiles

What can we gain by sailing to the moon if we are not able to cross the abyss that separates us from ourselves? This is the most important of all voyages of discovery, and without it, all the rest are not only useless, but disastrous. - Thomas Merton

What is there that confers the noblest delight? What is that which swells a man’s breast with pride above that which any other experience can bring to him? Discovery! - Mark Twain

What people think of as the moment of discovery is really the discovery of the question. - Jonas Salk

Who never walks save where he sees men’s tracks makes no discoveries. - J. G. Holland

You have to leave the city of your comfort and go into the wilderness of your intuition. What you'll discover will be wonderful. What you'll discover is yourself. - Alan Alda

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