Quotes About Great Discoveries

#1. All great discoveries ... are products as much of doubt as of certainty, and the two in opposition clear the air for marvelous accidents.

Mark Helprin

#2. Great discoveries, Ganapathi, are often the result of making the wrong mistake at the right time.

Shashi Tharoor

#3. Harebrained schemes often lead to great discoveries.

Barbara Corcoran

#4. What is wrong is not the great discoveries of science - information is always better than ignorance, no matter what information or what ignorance. What is wrong is the belief behind the information, the belief that information will change the world. It won't.

Archibald MacLeish

#5. Great inventions are never, and great discoveries are seldom, the work of any one mind. Every great invention is really an aggregation of minor inventions, or the final step of a progression. It is not usually a creation, but a growth, as truly so as is the growth of the trees in the forest.

Robert Henry Thurston

#6. The inventions and the great discoveries have opened up whole continents to reciprocal communication and interchange, provided we are willing.

Alva Myrdal

#7. We've only explored about 5% of our ocean. There are great discoveries yet to be made down there - fantastic creatures representing millions of years of evolution and possibly bioactive compounds that could benefit us in ways we can't even imagine.

Edith Widder

#8. Genius lies not in making the great discoveries, but in seeing the connections between the smaller ones ...

Walker Percy

#9. The seed of great discoveries are constantly floating around us, but they only take root in minds well prepared to receive them.

Joseph Henry

#10. Thought is the original source of all wealth, all success, all material gain, all great discoveries and inventions, and of all achievement.

Claude M. Bristol

#11. I believe that she has the kind of magic that causes revolutions and promotes great discoveries. There's nothing I enjoy more than to observe Gabriela in the midst of a group of people. Do you know what she reminds me of? A fragrant rose in a bouquet of artificial flowers.

Jorge Amado

#12. People who have read a good deal rarely make great discoveries. I do not say this in excuse of laziness, but because invention presupposes an extensive independent contemplation of things.

Georg C. Lichtenberg

#13. All great discoveries," the elder Marratta had once said, "are products as much of doubt as of certainty, and the two in opposition clear the air for marvelous accidents." At

Mark Helprin

#14. In a lot of scientists, the ratio of wonder to skepticism declines in time. That may be connected with the fact that in some fields-mathematics, physics, some others-the great discoveries are almost entirely made by youngsters.

Carl Sagan

#15. Lands of great discoveries are also lands of great injustices.

Ivo Andric

#16. It is remarkable that when great discoveries are effected, their simplicity always seems to detract from their originality: on these occasions we are reminded of the egg of Columbus!

Benjamin Disraeli

#17. 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 to myself.

Alexander Graham Bell

#18. All great discoveries are made by opening up the changing room door

Josh Stern

#19. I would argue that play is an essential part of living. It's the process by which great discoveries are made, industries are built, and people fall in love. The instinctive human drive toward play continuously pushes us to find new ways to understand and influence the world around us.

John Ferrara

#20. It is one of Miss Manners's great discoveries that one needn't contradict others in order to set them straight.

Judith Martin

#21. A great scientist once said that genius consists not in making great discoveries but in seeing the connection between small discoveries.

Walker Percy

#22. All great discoveries are made by men whose feelings run ahead of their thinking.

Charles Henry Parkhurst

#23. Thoughts and ideas are the source of all wealth, success, material gain, all great discoveries, inventions and achievements

Mark Victor Hansen

#24. The Hubble Law is one of the great discoveries in science; it is one of the main supports of the scientific story of Genesis.

Robert Jastrow

#25. One of the great discoveries of marathon running for the masses is that you run against no one but yourself.

Phil Hewitt

#26. The mind can proceed only so far upon what it knows and can prove. There comes a point where the mind takes a higher plane of knowledge, but can never prove how it got there. All great discoveries have involved such a leap

Albert Einstein

#27. Great discoveries, whether of silk or gravity, are always windfalls. They happen to people loafing under trees.

Jeffrey Eugenides

#28. By mutual confidence and mutual aid - great deeds are done, and great discoveries made

Homer

#29. But biology and computer science - life and computation - are related. I am confident that at their interface great discoveries await those who seek them.

Leonard Adleman

#30. All great scientists have, in a certain sense, been great artists; the man with no imagination may collect facts, but he cannot make great discoveries.

Karl Pearson

#31. All great discoveries in experimental physics have been due to the intuition of men who made free use of models, which were for them not products of the imagination but representatives of real things.
Max Born (1953)

Victor J. Stenger

#32. Great discoveries are made accidentally less often than the populace likes to think.
(Commenting on how an accident led to the discovery of X-rays)

William Cecil Dampier

#33. The great discoveries are usually obvious.

Phil Crosby

#34. None of the great discoveries was made by a 'specialist' or a 'researcher'.

Martin H. Fischer

#35. One of the greatest discoveries a person makes, one of their great surprises, is to find they can do what they were afraid they couldn't do.

Henry Ford

#36. Although science and technology open up boundless opportunities, they also present great perils because Satan employs these marvelous discoveries to his great advantage.

James E. Faust

#37. Nearly all the great improvements, discoveries, inventions, and achievements which have elevated and blessed humanity have been the triumphs of enthusiasm.

Orison Swett Marden

#38. Of course, Einstein was a very great scientist indeed, and I have enormous respect for him, and great admiration for the discoveries he made. But he was very committed to a view of the objectivity of the physical world.

John Polkinghorne

#39. The so-called 'discoveries' of the Impressionists could not have been unknown to the old masters; and if they made no use of them, it was because all great artists have renounced the use of effects. And in simplifying nature, they made it all the greater.

Pierre-Auguste Renoir

#40. Taken as a story of human achievement, and human blindness, the discoveries in the sciences are among the great epics.

J. Robert Oppenheimer

#41. This whole universe, with all its vastness, grandeur and beauty, is nothing but sheer imagination. In spite of so many discoveries, researches and scientific knowledge, the creation remains a great unsolved riddle.

Meher Baba

#42. Everything great in science and art is simple. What can be less complicated than the greatest discoveries of humanity - gravitation, the compass, the printing press, the steam engine, the electric telegraph?

Jules Verne

#43. Alfred Nobel's discoveries are characteristic; powerful explosives can help men perform admirable tasks. They are also a means to terrible destruction in the hands of the great criminals who lead peoples to war.

Pierre Curie

#44. Noting all these things with the great delight which learning gives, we cannot but be stirred by these discoveries when we reflect upon the influence of them one by one.

Marcus Vitruvius Pollio

#45. Polymer synthesis in the 1950s was dominated by Karl Ziegler and Giulio Natta, whose discoveries of polymerization catalysts were of great importance for the development of the modem 'plastics' industry.

Alan J. Heeger

#46. The light that radiates from the great novels time can never dim, for human existence is perpetually being forgotten by man and thus the novelists' discoveries, however old they may be, will never cease to astonish.

Milan Kundera

#47. When we consider the magnitude and extent of his discoveries and their influence on the progress of science and of industry, there is no honour too great to pay to the memory of Faraday, one of the greatest scientific discoverers of all time.

Ernest Rutherford

#48. I was introduced to lots of great music through my local record store. It was a place where people knew music and they knew me, and could make great suggestions and discoveries. Whether it is in the physical world or on-line, the value of a great and knowledgeable record store has not gone away

Peter Gabriel

#49. America; a country that was discovered is now a discovery and making discoveries! America is America not because of the name America, but because of the great hands and minds who made the name America be America!

Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

#50. 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

#51. The great problems of the Twentieth century will have immediate relation to the discoveries of America, of Africa, and of Australia.

Joseph Jacobs

#52. As regards intellectual work it remains a fact, indeed, that great decisions in the realm of thought and momentous discoveries and solutions of problems are only possible to an individual, working in solitude.

Sigmund Freud

#53. If a government is to do great new things, it will need more support. If a government is to change the world, it will need mass support. This is one of the discoveries of modern government.

Bernard Crick

#54. Great inventors and discoverers seem to have made their discoveries and inventions as it were by the way, in the course of their everyday life.

Elizabeth Charles

#55. It is mere nonsense to put pain among the discoveries of science. Lay down this book and reflect for five minutes on the fact that all the great religions were first preached, and long practiced, in a world without chloroform.

C.S. Lewis

#56. The imagination is a healthy thing, and a great many scientific discoveries could not have been made without it, but it need to be harnessed to some serious object if it is to come to anything.

Diane Setterfield

#57. The great and unlooked for discoveries that have taken place of late years have all concurred to lead many men into the opinion that we were touching on a period big with the most important changes.

Thomas Malthus

#58. The better educated we are and the more acquired information we have, the better prepared shall we find our minds for making great and fruitful discoveries.

Claude Bernard

#59. In following your inclinations and moving toward mastery, you make a great contribution to society, enriching it with discoveries and insights, and making the most of the diversity in nature and among human society.

Robert Greene

#60. A great unification is now taking place between science and spirituality. The most advanced discoveries of modern science are rising to reaffirm the timeless wisdom of the great religious and spiritual traditions of every culture.

John Hagelin

#61. Pasteur said, like all great discoverers, he knew something about accidental discoveries. The best way to get maximal exposure is to keep researching. Collect opportunities--

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

#62. Science is the most exciting and sustained enterprise of discovery in the history of our species. It is the great adventure of our time. We live today in an era of discovery that far outshadows the discoveries of the New World five hundred years ago.

Michael Crichton

#63. It is interesting to note how many of the great scientific discoveries begin as myths.

Rollo May

#64. Peer reviewers go for orthodoxy ... Many of the great 19th-century discoveries were made by men who had independent wealth-Charles Darwin is the prototype. They trusted themselves.

James Black

#65. Throughout history, people have studied pure science from a desire to understand the universe rather than practical applications for commercial gain. But their discoveries later turned out to have great practical benefits.

Stephen Hawking

#66. Mathematical discoveries, small or great are never born of spontaneous generation.

Henri Poincare

#67. His teaching became a turning point in chess history: it was from Steinitz that the era of modern chess began. The contribution of the first world champion to its development is comparable with the great scientific discoveries of the 19th century.

Garry Kasparov

#68. The very greatest things - great thoughts, discoveries, inventions - have usually been nurtured in hardship, often pondered over in sorrow, and at length established with difficulty.

Samuel Smiles

#69. The achievements and discoveries of a great but dying society can bring light to a young and growing one.

Morgan Llywelyn

#70. A scientist is no more a collector and classifier of facts than a historian is a man who complies and classifies a chronology of the dates of great battles and major discoveries.

Peter Medawar

#71. The 19th century was the great period of engineering, thanks to the railways, thanks to lots of discoveries in metallurgy.

Joe Harris