Quotes about Discovery

It is the tension between creativity and skepticism that has produced the stunning and unexpected findings of science.

I think if we ever reach the point where we think we thoroughly understand who we are and where we came from, we will have failed.

These days there seems to be nowhere left to explore, at least on the land area of the Earth. Victims of their very success, the explorers now pretty much stay home.

The book of Nature had waited more than a millennium for a reader.

Science is generated by and devoted to free inquiry: the idea that any hypothesis, no matter how strange, deserves to be considered on its merits. The suppression of uncomfortable ideas may be common in religion and politics, but it is not the path to knowledge; it has no place in the endeavor of science. We do not know in advance who will discover fundamental new insights.

Once upon a time, we soared into the Solar System. For a few years. Then we hurried back. Why? What happened? What was 'Apollo' really about?

We are a way for the cosmos to know itself.

Something very strange is going on in the depths of space.

Science is an ongoing process. It never ends. There is no single ultimate truth to be achieved, after which all the scientists can retire. And because this is so, the world is far more interesting, both for the scientists and for the millions of people in every nation who, while not professional scientists, are deeply interested in the methods and findings of science.

Science is based on experiment, on a willingness to challenge old dogma, on an openness to see the universe as it really is.

But in introducing me simultaneously to skepticism and to wonder, they taught me the two uneasily cohabiting modes of thought that are central to the scientific method.

When enough fiction is written and enough scientific hypotheses are proposed, sooner or later there will be accidental concordances.