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Discovery Quotes

Browse 2982 quotes about Discovery.

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Discovery Quotes

“During all those years of experimentation and research, I never once made a discovery. All my work was deductive, and the results I achieved were those of invention, pure and simple. I would construct a theory and work on its lines until I found it was untenable. Then it would be discarded at once and another theory evolved. This was the only possible way for me to work out the problem.”

WayYearsMadeProblemWould BeFoundLinesSimpleResultsTheoryPureResearchDiscoveryWork OutInventionConstructsExperimentationDiscarded
Author:Thomas A. Edison
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“Every new discovery in science brings with it a host of new problems, just as the invention of the automobile brought with it gas stations, roads, garages, mechanics, and a thousand other subsidiary details.”

ProblemThousandDiscoveryDetailsInventionGasStationsHostMechanicAutomobileGarageNew DiscoveriesGas StationsDiscovery In Science
Book:The Strange Story of the Quantum: An Account for the General Reader of the Growth of the Ideas Underlying Our Present Atomic Knowledge
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“Work incessantly, cultivate discrimination, gather freedom from your own hard-earned results. Disregard successes but go back for help in an immediate problem. The possibility of discovery is everywhere. Freedom from your own work allows for intuition that draws from all your experience and perception but goes beyond it.”

HardHelpingProblemResultsPossibilityPerceptionDrawsDiscoveryPhotographerIntuitionDiscriminationDisregardIncessantly
Book:Paul Caponigro
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“Thus you see, most noble Sir, how this type of solution to the Königsberg bridge problem bears little relationship to mathematics, and I do not understand why you expect a mathematician to produce it, rather than anyone else, for the solution is based on reason alone, and its discovery does not depend on any mathematical principle.”

LittlesDoeReasonProblemPrinciplesProduceTypeDependsBearsSolutionsDiscoveryMathematicsNobleMathematicalBridgesMathematicianEuler
Author:Leonhard Euler
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“Through scientific discovery and technological innovation, we enlist the forces of the natural world to solve many of the uniquely human problems we face - feeding and providing energy to agrowing population, improving human health, taking responsibility for protecting the environment and the global ecosystem, and ensuring our own Nation's security. Scientific discoveries inspire and enrich us, teaching us about the mysteries of life and the nature of the world.”

WorldHumansProblemFacesEnergyForceNationsNaturalResponsibilityEnvironmentMysteryTeachingSecurityInspireDiscoveryInnovationPopulationSolveProvidingTechnologicalImprovingFeedingTaking ResponsibilityNatural WorldEcosystemsScientific DiscoveryMystery Of LifeHuman ProblemsHuman Health
Author:William J. Clinton
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“Precisely constructed models for linguistic structure can play an important role, both negative and positive, in the process of discovery itself. By pushing a precise but inadequate formulation to an unacceptable conclusion, we can often expose the exact source of this inadequacy and, consequently, gain a deep understanding of the linguistic data. More positively, a formalized theory may automatically provide solutions for many problems other than those for which it was explicitly designed.”

MayImportantPlayProblemProcessUnderstandingRolesTheorySourceModelsSolutionsDiscoveryGainsNegativeStructureConclusionDataPushingPrecisePositivelyInadequateInadequacyDeep UnderstandingNegative And Positive
Book:Syntactic Structures
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“[A]ll knowledge is one. When a light brightens and illuminates a corner of a room, it adds to the general illumination of the entire room. Over and over again, scientific discoveries have provided answers to problems that had no apparent connection with the phenomena that gave rise to the discovery.”

ProblemLightAnswersRoomsDiscoveryConnectionsAddCornersIlluminationScientific Discovery
Book:Atom: Journey Across the Subatomic Cosmos
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“I can teach anybody how to get what they want out of life. The problem is that I can't find anybody who can tell me what they want.”

WantLifeI CanProblemVisionTeachDiscoverySelf DiscoveryFinding YourselfDiscoveringTrue SelfKnow YourselfKnow ThyselfSassySelf KnowingDiscovering YourselfVision Of LifeDiscovering SelfMission And VisionDiscovery In LifeDiscovering Your True SelfFinding Your PathGet To Know MeBeing Your True SelfTrue VisionDiscovering Who You Are
Book:Mark Twain on Common Sense: Timeless Advice and Words of Wisdom from America's Most-Revered Humorist
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“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.”

FactsProblemIndividualDecisionSolitudeIntellectualSolutionsDiscoveryRegardRemainsRealmsWorking It
Book:SIGMUND FREUD Ultimate Collection: Psychoanalytic Studies, Theoretical Essays & Articles: The Interpretation of Dreams, Psychopathology of Everyday Life, Dream Psychology, Three Contributions to the Theory of Sex, Beyond the Pleasure Principle, Totem and Taboo, Leonardo da Vinci…
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“To be loved by someone is to realize how much they share the same needs that lie at the heart of our own attraction to them. Albert Camus suggested that we fall in love with people because, from the outside, they look so whole, physically whole and emotionally 'together' - when subjectively we feel dispersed and confused. We would not love if there were no lack within us, but we are offended by the discovery of a similar lack in the other. Expecting to find the answer, we find only the duplicate of our own problem.”

PeopleIfsNeedsFeelsLooksHeartWholeProblemTogetherLyingFallRealizingAnswersShareDiscoveryFalling In LoveAttractionConfusedExpectingOffendedDuplicate
Book:On Love: A Novel
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“Even mistaken hypotheses and theories are of use in leading to discoveries. This remark is true in all the sciences. The alchemists founded chemistry by pursuing chimerical problems and theories which are false. In physical science, which is more advanced than biology, we might still cite men of science who make great discoveries by relying on false theories.”

MenMindStillsUseProblemSeemsMightAbleScienceMistakeTheoryWeaknessDiscoveryErrorsObstaclesBiologyChemistryMultitudesMistakenHypothesisRemarksAlchemistCitingPhysical Science
Author:Claude Bernard
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“A great discovery solves a great problem, but there is a grain of discovery in the solution of any problem. Your problem may be modest, but if it challenges your curiosity and brings into play your inventive faculties, and if you solve it by your own means, you may experience the tension and enjoy the triumph of discovery.”

IfsMayMeanPlayProblemScienceEnjoyChallengesSolutionsDiscoveryCuriositySolveTriumphTensionFacultyGrainProblem SolvingModest
Author:George Polya
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“Our present work sets forth mathematical principles of philosophy. For the basic problem of philosophy seems to be to discover the forces of nature from the phenomena of motions and then to demonstrate the other phenomena from these forces. It is to these ends that the general propositions in books 1 and 2 are directed, while in book 3 our explanation of the system of the world illustrates these propositions.”

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Book:Newton: Philosophical Writings
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“The major credit I think Jim and I deserve ... is for selecting the right problem and sticking to it. It's true that by blundering about we stumbled on gold, but the fact remains that we were looking for gold. Both of us had decided, quite independently of each other, that the central problem in molecular biology was the chemical structure of the gene. ... We could not see what the answer was, but we considered it so important that we were determined to think about it long and hard, from any relevant point of view.”

ThinkingLongImportantHardFactsProblemScienceAnswersViewsMajorsDiscoveryDeserveDecidedGoldImportanceRemainsStructureCreditDeterminedPoint Of ViewBiologyChemicalsRelevantGenesMolecular Biology
Author:Francis Crick
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“The advances of biology during the past 20 years have been breathtaking, particularly in cracking the mystery of heredity. Nevertheless, the greatest and most difficult problems still lie ahead. The discoveries of the 1970's about the chemical roots of memory in nerve cells or the basis of learning, about the complex behavior of man and animals, the nature of growth, development, disease and aging will be at least as fundamental and spectacular as those of the recent past.”

MenYearsHas BeensStillsProblemPastScienceLyingDifficultGrowthMemoriesAnimalLearningMysteryDevelopmentDiseaseBehaviorDiscoveryRootsBasesFundamentalsAgingComplexesCellsBiologyNervesChemistryChemicalsNeverthelessSpectacularHeredityBreathtakingDifficult ProblemsRecent Past
Author:H. Bentley Glass
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“In my first publication I might have claimed that I had come to the conclusion, as a result of serious study of the literature and deep thought, that valuable antibacterial substances were made by moulds and that I set out to investigate the problem. That would have been untrue and I preferred to tell the truth that penicillin started as a chance observation. My only merit is that I did not neglect the observation and that I pursued the subject as a bacteriologist. My publication in 1929 was the starting-point of the work of others who developed penicillin especially in the chemical field.”

FirstsHas BeensMadeProblemMightScienceLiteratureChanceResultsStudySubjectsFieldsSeriousDiscoveryStartingValuableConclusionObservationSubstanceMeritTelling The TruthNeglectChemicalsDeep ThoughtPursuedPublicationStarting PointUntrueMouldPenicillin
Author:Alexander Fleming
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“I don’t think there’s any problem with advancing consciousness and becoming more and more aware of the struggle, not with the world, not to convince other people to do anything. The really interesting think is the struggle with the self, and the relation with the self, and there is no end to the improvement that can be done there, the discoveries that can be made.”

PeopleThinkingWorldMadeEndsSelfDoneProblemInterestingConsciousnessStruggleBecomingDiscoveryRelationImprovementConvinceReally InterestingBecoming MoreAdvancing
Author:Allen Ginsberg
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“The art of creation lies in the gift of perceiving the particular and generalizing it, thus creating the particular again. It is therefore a powerful transforming force and a generator of creative solutions in relation to a given problem. It is the currency of human exchanges, which enables the sharing of states of the soul and conscience, and the discovery of new fields of experience.”

HumansArtSoulStatesProblemLyingGivenForcePowerfulCreativeCreationFieldsParticularCreatingSolutionsConscienceDiscoveryRelationCurrencyTransformingGeneratorCreative Solutions
Author:Yehudi Menuhin
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“Mathematics is the art of explanation. If you deny students the opportunity to engage in this activity-- to pose their own problems, to make their own conjectures and discoveries, to be wrong, to be creatively frustrated, to have an inspiration, and to cobble together their own explanations and proofs-- you deny them mathematics itself.”

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Author:Paul Lockhart
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“Times have changed, and science has made great progress, and so has our work; but our principles have only been confirmed, and along with them our conviction that mankind can hope for a solution to its problems, among which the most urgent are those of peace and unity, only by turning its attention and energies to the discovery of the child and to the development of the great potentialities of the human personality in the course of its formation.”

HumansChildrenMadeProblemCoursesEnergyAttentionPrinciplesProgressMankindChangedPersonalityDevelopmentSolutionsDiscoveryUnityConvictionUrgentFormationMontessoriHuman PersonalityTimes Have ChangedGreat ProgressPeace And Unity
Author:Maria Montessori
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“Through the discovery of Buchner, Biology was relieved of another fragment of mysticism. The splitting up of sugar into CO2 and alcohol is no more the effect of a 'vital principle' than the splitting up of cane sugar by invertase. The history of this problem is instructive, as it warns us against considering problems as beyond our reach because they have not yet found their solution.”

ProblemScienceFoundPrinciplesMysteryEffectsSolutionsDiscoveryAlcoholBiologyMysticismSugarConsideringFragmentsRelievedSplittingCo2Splitting Up
Author:Jacques Loeb
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“The greatest discovery of the 19th century was not in the realm of the physical sciences, but the power of the subconscious mind touched by faith. Any individual can tap into an eternal reservoir of power that will enable them to overcome any problem that may arise. All weaknesses can be overcome, bodily healing, financial independence, spiritual awakening, and prosperity beyond your wildest dreams. This is the superstructure of happiness.”

MindMayProblemDreamHappinessSpiritualIndividualHealingCenturyEternalWeaknessDiscoveryOvercomingIndependenceFinancialProsperityAwakeningAriseRealmsTouchedSubconsciousSpiritual Awakening19th CenturySubconscious MindReservoirsPhysical ScienceWildest DreamsFinancial Independence
Author:William James
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“It is one of our most exciting discoveries that local discovery leads to a complex of further discoveries. Corollary to this we find that we no sooner get a problem solved than we are overwhelmed with a multiplicity of additional problems in a most beautiful payoff of heretofore unknown, previously unrecognized, & as-yet unsolved problems.”

ProblemBeautifulDiscoveryExcitingComplexesLocalsOverwhelmedSpectacularMultiplicityPayoffUnsolved Problems
Book:Synergetics: Explorations in the Geometry of Thinking
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