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Discovery Quotes

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Discovery Quotes

“It is interesting to transport one's self back to the times when Astronomy began; to observe how discoveries were connected together, how errors have got mixed up with truth, have delayed the knowledge of it, and retarded its progress; and, after having followed the various epochs and traversed every climate, finally to contemplate the edifice founded on the labours of successive centuries and of various nations.”

Self Together Science Nations Interesting Progress Century Discovery Errors Climate Various Connected Astronomy Labour Contemplating Transport Delayed Retarded Edifice

Author:Jean Sylvain Bailly

“Americans have always pursued our dreams within a free market that has been the engine of our progress. It's a market that has created a prosperity that is the envy of the world, and rewarded the innovators and risk-takers who have made America a beacon of science, and technology, and discovery. But the American economy has worked in large part because we have guided the market's invisible hand with a higher principle - that America prospers when all Americans can prosper. That is why we have put in place rules of the road to make competition fair, and open, and honest.”

“Truth travels down from the heights of philosophy to the humblest walks of life, and up from the simplest perceptions of an awakened intellect to the discoveries which almost change the face of the world. At every stage of its progress it is genial, luminous, creative.”

World Philosophy Truth Faces Walks Creative Progress Stage Perception Discovery Intellect Height Simplest Awakened Luminous Walks Of Life

Book:Importance of Practical Education and Useful Knowledge: Being a Selection from His Orations and Other Discourses

Source: Importance of Practical Education and Useful Knowledge: Being a Selection from His Orations and Other Discourses

“The art of flirtation is dying. A man and woman are either in love these days or just friends. In the realm of love, reticence and sophistication should go hand in hand, for one of the joys of life is discovery. Nowadays, instead of progressing from vous to tu, from Mister to Jim, it's 'darling' and 'come to my place' in the first hour.”

“Economic progress means the discovery and application of better ways of doing things to satisfy our wants. The piping of water to a household that previously dragged it from a well, the growing of two blades of grass where one grew before, the development of a power loom that enables one man to weave ten times as much as he could before, the use of steam power and electric power instead of horse or human power - all these things clearly represent economic progress.”

“Organization is simply the means by which the acts of ordinary men can be made to add up to extraordinary results. To this idea of progress that does not wait on some lucky break, some chance discovery, or some rare stroke of genius, but instead is achieved through systematic, cumulative effort, the engineer has contributed brilliantly.”

“It is this ideal of progress through cumulative effort rather than through genius—progress by organised effort, progress which does not wait for some brilliant stroke, some lucky discovery, or the advent of some superman, has been the chief gift of science to social philosophy.”

Doe Has Beens Philosophy Social Waiting Effort Progress Genius Lucky Discovery Ideals Organization Brilliant Chiefs Strokes Advent Organised Cumulative

Author:William Wickenden

“The progress of science is the discovery at each step of a new order which gives unity to what had seemed unlike.”

Giving Order Steps Progress Discovery Unity

Book:Science and Human Values

Source: Science and Human Values

“Every good laboratory consists of first rate men working in great harmony to insure the progress of science; but down at the end of the hall is an unsociable, wrong-headed fellow working on unprofitable lines, and in his hands lies the hope of discovery.”

Men Firsts Ends Hands Lying Lines Progress Discovery Harmony Fellows Rate Very Good Halls Laboratory

Author:Ernest Rutherford

“If we contrast the rapid progress of this mischievous discovery [gunpowder] with the slow and laborious advances of reason, science, and the arts of peace, a philosopher, according to his temper, will laugh or weep at the folly of mankind.”

Ifs Art Reason Laughing Progress Mankind Discovery Philosopher Folly Temper Contrast Rapids Mischievous Gunpowder

Author:Edward Gibbon

“Man's material discoveries have outpaced his moral progress.”

Men Moral Progress Materials Discovery

Author:Clement Attlee

“Animal experimentation is the blackest of all the black crimes that a man is at present committing... We should be able to refuse to live if the price of living be the torture of sentient beings... I abhor [animal] experimentation with my whole soul. All the scientific discoveries stained with innocent blood I count as of no consequence... The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated.”

“Our colonizers have taught us to believe that our health has improved because of Western medicine, Western foods, and Western technology. In a society that values progress, our colonizers taught us that conditions in the world are perpetually improving, that with each new technological advancement, each new discovery, each new way to utilize resources, each new way to alter the environment, that the world is getting better, that it is advancing. These are all lies.”

“It is they [men of science] who hold the secret of the mysterious property of the mind by which error ministers to truth, and truth slowly but irrevocably prevails. Theirs is the logic of discovery, the demonstration of the advance of knowledge and the development of ideas, which as the earthly wants and passions of men remain almost unchanged, are the charter of progress, and the vital spark in history.”

Men Want Mind Ideas Science Passion Secret Knowledge Progress Development Discovery Logic Property Errors Mysterious Ministers Sparks Demonstration Charter

Book:Lectures on Modern History

Source: Lectures on Modern History

“Best of all, persons can sometimes be app-transcendent: making dramatic progress or discoveries, without any dependence on any app. In this context, I like to mention Steve Jobs. While he had as much to do as anyone with the invention and development of apps, he NEVER was limited by the current technology - indeed, he typically transcended it and relied on his own considerable wits.”

Persons Sometimes Jobs Technology Progress Development Discovery Currents Wit Invention Dramatic Dependence Transcendent Apps

Author:Howard Gardner

“Progress depends on our brain. The most important part of our brain, that which is neocortical, must be used to help others and not just to make discoveries.”

Important Helping Used Brain Progress Depends Discovery Helping Others

Author:Rita Levi-Montalcini

“Doubt, the essential preliminary of all improvement and discovery, must accompany the stages of man's onward progress. The faculty of doubting and questioning, without which those of comparison and judgment would be useless, is itself a divine prerogative of the reason.”

Men Reason Would Be Doubt Progress Stage Divine Essentials Judgment Discovery Improvement Useless Comparison Faculty Questioning Accompany Prerogative

Book:Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry

Source: Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry

“I am not an advocate for frequent changes in laws and Constitutions. But laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths discovered and manners and opinions change, with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also to keep pace with the times. We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy as civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors.”

Source: Thomas Jefferson, His Words and Vision

“The European talks of progress because by the aid of a few scientific discoveries he has established a society which has mistaken comfort for civilisation.”

Progress Comfort Discovery Aids Mistaken Civilisation Scientific Discovery

Author:Benjamin Disraeli

“Without a constant misuse of language there cannot be any discovery, any progress”

Language Progress Discovery Constant Misuse

Book:Against Method

Source: Against Method

“Man's progress is but a gradual discovery that his questions have no meaning.”

Men Progress Evolution Discovery

Author:Antoine de Saint-Exupery

“The sure ways to create new ventures of discovery are to keep an open mind.”

Way Mind Progress Evolution Discovery Venture Open Mind Keep An Open Mind New Ventures

Author:Charles Kettering

“We need affordable space travel to inspire our youth, to let them know that they can experience their dreams, can set significant goals and be in a position to lead all of us to future progress in exploration, discovery and fun. Thanks to the X Prize for the inspiration.”

“Progress in science depends on new techniques, new discoveries and new ideas, probably in that order.”

Ideas Science Order Progress Depends Discovery Technique New Ideas New Discoveries Progress In Science

Author:Sydney Brenner

“Just by studying mathematics we can hope to make a guess at the kind of mathematics that will come into the physics of the future... If someone can hit on the right lines along which to make this development, it may lead to a future advance in which people will first discover the equations and then, after examining them, gradually learn how to apply them... My own belief is that this is a more likely line of progress than trying to guess at physical pictures.”

People Ifs Trying Firsts Kind May Science Belief Lines My Own Study Progress Development Discovery Mathematics Physics Equations Examining Studying Mathematics

Author:Paul Dirac

“The earth's becoming at a particular period the residence of human beings, was an era in the moral, not in the physical world, that our study and contemplation of the earth, and the laws which govern its animate productions, ought no more to be considered in the light of a disturbance or deviation from the system, than the discovery of the satellites of Jupiter should be regarded as a physical event in the history of those heavenly bodies, however influential they may have become from that time in advancing the progress of sound philosophy among men.”

Source: Principles of Geology

“Congress shall have Power . . . to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Time to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.”

Writing Art Education Progress Discovery Congress Exclusive Inventor Patents Unpatriotic Limited Time Copyright Law Section 8

Book:The Origin of the Nation: Declaration of Independence, Constitution, Bill of Rights and Other Amendments, Federalist Papers & Common Sense: Creating America - Landmark Documents that Shaped a New Nation

Source: The Origin of the Nation: Declaration of Independence, Constitution, Bill of Rights and Other Amendments, Federalist Papers & Common Sense: Creating America - Landmark Documents that Shaped a New Nation

“Scientific progress is the discovery of a more and more comprehensive simplicity... The previous successes give us confidence in the future of science: we become more and more conscious of the fact that the universe is cognizable.”

Giving Facts Success Science Universe Understanding Progress Conscious Discovery Simplicity Comprehensive Scientific Progress

Author:Georges Lemaitre

“In my estimation it was obvious that Jansky had made a fundamental and very important discovery. Furthermore, he had exploited it to the limit of his equipment facilities. If greater progress were to be made it would be necessary to construct new and different equipment especially designed to measure the cosmic static.”

Ifs Made Important Different Would Be Greater Progress Limits Discovery Fundamentals Obvious Astronomy Made It Cosmic Equipment Constructs Facility Static Estimation

Author:Grote Reber

“The beginning of civilisation is the discovery of some useful arts, by which men acquire property, comforts, or luxuries. The necessity or desire of preserving them leads to laws and social institutions. The discovery of peculiar arts gives superiority to particular nations ... to subjugate other nations, who learn their arts, and ultimately adopt their manners;- so that in reality the origin as well as the progress and improvement of civil society is founded in mechanical and chemical inventions.”

Source: Salmonia: or, Days of fly-fishing; in a series of conversations: with some account of the habits of fishes belonging to the genus Salmo. Consolation in travel, or, The last days of a philosopher

“These enemies of divine revelation extol human progress to the skies, and with rash and sacrilegious daring would have it introduced into the Catholic religion as if this religion were not the work of God but of man, or some kind of philosophical discovery susceptible of perfection by human efforts.”

“Hinduism has made marvelous discoveries in things of religion, of the spirit, of the soul. We have no eye for these great and fine discoveries. We are dazzled by the material progress that Western science has made. Ancient India has survived because Hinduism was not developed along material but spiritual lines.”

Made Soul Eye Spiritual Spirit Lines Progress Materials Fine Discovery India Western Ancient Hinduism Marvelous Survived Hindu Religion Ancient India

Author:Mahatma Gandhi

“Perfection of planning is a symptom of decay. During a period of exciting discovery or progress, there is no time to plan the perfect headquarters.”

Time Perfect Progress Plans Periods Discovery Perfection Exciting Planning Decay Symptoms Headquarters

Author:C. Northcote Parkinson

“Behold the turtle. He makes progress only when he sticks his neck out.”

“Perhaps the world progresses not by maturing, but by being in a permanent state of adolescence, of thrilled discovery.”

World States Progress Discovery Permanent Mature Adolescence

Author:Julian Barnes

“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.”

“Is civilization progress? The challenge, I think, is clear; and, as clearly, the final answer will be given not by our amassing of knowledge, or by the discoveries of our science, or by the speed of our aircraft, but by the effect of our civilized activities as a whole have upon the quality of our planet's life-the life of plants and animals as that of men.”

“Progress is the exploration of our own error. Evolution is a consolidation of what have always begun as errors. And errors are of two kinds: errors that turn out to be true and errors that turn out to be false (which are most of them). But they both have the same character of being an imaginative speculation. I say all this because I want very much to talk about the human side of discovery and progress, and it seems to me terribly important to say this in an age in which most non-scientists are feeling a kind of loss of nerve.”

Source: The Origins of Knowledge and Imagination