Best 1999 quotes in «discovery quotes» category

I have always been slightly suspicious of the theory of evolution because of its ability to account for any property of living beings (the long neck of the giraffe, for example). I have therefore tried to see whether biological discoveries over the last thirty years or so fit in with Darwin's theory. I do not think that they do. To my mind, the theory does not stand up at all.

I have an idea and a first line -- and that suggests the rest of it. I have little concept of what I’m going to say, or where it’s going. I have some idea of how long it’s going to be -- but not what will happen or what the themes will be. That’s the intrigue of doing it -- it’s a process of discovery. You get to discover what you’re going to say and what it’s going to mean.

I have been trying to point out that in our lives chance may have an astonishing influence and, if I may offer advice to the young laboratory worker, it would be this-never neglect an extraordinary appearance or happening. It may be-usually is, in fact-a false alarm that leads to nothing, but may on the other hand be the clue provided by fate to lead you to some important advance.

I have criticized absent people so often, and then discovered, to my humiliation, that I was talking with their relatives, that I have grown superstitious about that sort of thing and dropped it.

I have discovered nothing new; I have only perceived what I already knew.

I have discovered that the unasked-for accident can be the salvation of what you are doing.

I have discovered that my freedom is within me, and nothing can destroy it.

I have made a great discovery. I no longer believe in anything. Objects don't exist for me except in so far as a rapport exists between them and myself. When one attains this harmony, one reaches a sort of intellectual non-existence, what I can only describe as a sense of peace, which makes everything possible and right. Life then becomes a perpetual revelation. That is true poetry.

I have made the most important discovery of my career, the most important discovery of my life: It is only in the mysterious equations of love that any logic or reasons can be found.

I have never done anything 'useful'. No discovery of mine has made, or is likely to make, directly or indirectly, for good or ill, the least difference to the amenity of the world... Judged by all practical standards, the value of my mathematical life is nil; and outside mathematics it is trivial anyhow. I have just one chance of escaping a verdict of complete triviality, that I may be judged to have created something worth creating. And that I have created something is undeniable: the question is about its value.

I have not yet lost a feeling of wonder, and of delight, that this delicate motion should reside in all the ordinary things around us, revealing itself only to him who looks for it. I remember, in the winter of our first experiments, just seven years ago, looking on snow with new eyes. There the snow lay around my doorstep - great heaps of protons quietly precessing in the earth’s magnetic field. To see the world for a moment as something rich and strange is the private reward of many a discovery.

I have put [the word] "discoveries" in inverted commas because scientific results, perhaps as much at least as artistic achievements, are a product of contemporary taste, driven by momentary appetites rather than eternal verities.

I invented nothing new. I simply assembled the discoveries of other men behind whom were centuries of work. Had I worked fifty or ten or even five years before, I would have failed. So it is with every new thing. Progress happens when all the factors that make for it are ready, and then it is inevitable. To teach that a comparatively few men are responsible for the greatest forward steps of mankind is the worst sort of nonsense.

I just play to progressive audiences. You know, if they're watching Discovery Channel, History Channel, that kind of thing, "Monty Python" have already laid the groundwork. They're known around the world. People like that kind of surrealist, left-field humor, and that's what I do. And "Saturday Night Live," a lot of American humor. "The Simpsons," above all, the weird, left-field humor, which I love. And sardonic. So that's all I'm doing. I find that audience, and they're in every developed country around the world.

I invented nothing new, I simply assembled the discoveries of other men behind whom there was centuries of work.

I know playwrights who like to kid themselves into saying that their characters are so well formed that they just take over. They determine the structure of the play. By which is meant, I suspect, only that the unconscious mind has done its work so thoroughly that the play just has to be filtered through the conscious mind. But there's work to be done - and discovery to be made.

I know of nothing more inspiring than that of making discoveries for ones self.

I know there are epic tales of romance, where love means you're supposed to die. Where it's all about sacrifice. But I don't want to die. I don't want Stephen to die. I'm looking for the scenario where we both get to live. Where we can continue this marvel that is love and discovery and trust.

I leaf through the ancient philosophers and find my newest discoveries there.

I know well what I am fleeing from but not what I am in search of.

I'll admit that the discovery of evolution is humbling, but it is also empowering. It transforms our relationship to the life around us. Instead of being outsiders watching the natural world go by, we are insiders. We are part of the process; we are the exquisite result of billions of years of natural research and development.

I left Europe [for India] as a Christian, I discovered I was a Hindu and returned as a Buddhist without ever having ceased to be a Christian.

I looked for it [heavy hydrogen, deuterium] because I thought it should exist. I didn't know it would have industrial applications or be the basic for the most powerful weapon ever known [the nuclear bomb] ... I thought maybe my discovery might have the practical value of, say, neon in neon signs.

I love children because that's a part of my life that was so happy, and I like to remember back to those days where everything is a discovery, and the world is so fresh.

I love being on sets with very seasoned directors as well as very new directors. Every time is a discovery process. You learn something new every time.

I love the unknown. I love the discovery of what will be happening and just kind of sitting back and not knowing.

I love the internet and it has been incredibly useful and I have made discoveries that have been immeasurably crucial to my work- things I don’t know how I ever would have found out otherwise, that are perfect, just what I need for whatever I’m doing.

I love to create interesting textures with language. You can do it as long as it seems like a discovery.

I made the unexpected but happy discovery that the answer to several of the questions that most occupied me was in fact one and the same: Cook.

I'm 100% proud of the TV work I achieved. The work I did on shows on insects and Great White sharks... stuff that's in school curriculums in England. Now they are showing up on Discovery Channel.

I made a startling discovery. Time spent writing = output of work. Amazing.

Imagine the first discovery that one of these epidemics was man-made—the panic, the violence that would ensue. That’s where the end would come. A typhoon kills a few hundred people, does a few billion in damage, and what do we do?” Erskine interlocked his fingers. “We come together. We put the pieces back. But a terrorist’s bomb.” He frowned. “A terrorist’s bomb does the same damage, and it throws the world into turmoil.” He spread his hands apart like an explosion going off. “When there’s only God to blame, we forgive him. When it’s our fellow man, we must destroy him.

I'm an adventurer. I like invention, I like discovery.

I'm always writing towards a discovery. When I'm writing poems in particular, I'm often writing because a few images coalesced in my mind and I thought, "I wonder why these images are abrading against each other. I wonder what happens if put them in a poem and explore them." I'm trying to learn something every time I write a poem.

I make a new discovery that totally blows; dying is the easy part. It's coming back to life that sucks.

I'm never quite sure how the poem is going to resolve itself and that I'm always in some way surprised. I make a discovery in a poem as I write it.

I mean, how would anyone learn anything if they weren't curious? How would scientists make discoveries? -- We all have the right to be different, don't we?

I'm not a big TV watcher, but I know that Discovery is a teaching network. And they've been so awesome to me, I love those people.

I met a lot of people in Europe. I even encountered myself.

I'm watching some television tonight. I'm watching The Discovery Channel. You know, this channel, you never ever plan on watching this. It just happens. You're flickin' around, all of a sudden - boom - you're watching a mole for an hour-and-a-half.

I'm not looking to step in and make 'big, bold changes' - I think reddit is great, and the team has a lot of good features already in the pipeline to improve functionality for users and mods, help with subreddit discovery, improve the API, and help bring reddit to more people.

I'm on a constant path of self-discovery and change. I'm trying to become a better person, a nicer person. I love therapy - it's brilliant.

I'm somebody who grew up listening to a lot of musical theater, so getting to finally write musical theater songs and songs that sound that way - the emphasis being on the storytelling, but the arrangements and the orchestrations can be really varied - I found that to be, actually, a really joyful discovery.

I'm trying to learn something about making a balance between the inner life and the outer life. I wouldn't write if I didn't need to be making those discoveries, if I didn't feel the perpetual ignorance of being a human being.

I'm quite good at taking in information so I voraciously inhale Wikipedia - which may have some things wrong in it, but I think is generally more information than we had before. Last tour we didn't have Wikipedia. And then Discovery Channel and History Channel. I can take it in and retain what I think are the most important facts.

I must consider the organizer as more important than the discoverer.

In 1929 the discovery of the wonders of the geometric series struck Wall Street with a force comparable to the invention of the wheel.

In '7th Heaven,' more than 'Teen Wolf,' was that I got to learn more about my character. In 'Teen Wolf,' I'd always get a new arc for that character every season, which was discovery for me.

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.

In an age of explosive development in the realm of medical technology, it is unnerving to find that the discoveries of Salk, Sabin, and even Pasteur remain irrelevant to much of humanity.