Scientific discovery and scientific knowledge have been achieved only by those who have gone in pursuit of them without any practical purpose whatsoever in view.

The process of scientific discovery is, in effect, a continual flight from wonder.

The public character of every public servant is legitimate subject of discussion, and his fitness or unfitness for office may be fairly canvassed by any person.

The first steps in the path of discovery, and the first approximate measures, are those which add most to the existing knowledge of mankind.

Funny thing about those Middle Ages, said Joseph. “They just keep coming back. Mortals keep thinking they’re in Modern Times, you know, they get all this neat technology and pass all these humanitarian laws, and then something happens: there’s an economic crisis, or science makes some discovery people can’t deal with. And boom, people go right back to burning Jews and selling pieces of the true Cross. Don’t you ever make the mistake of thinking that mortals want to live in a golden age. They hate thinking.

The reformation was preceded by the discovery of America, as if the Almighty graciously meant to open a sanctuary to the persecuted in future years, when home should afford neither friendship nor safety

The first step toward finding God, Who is Truth, is to discover the truth about myself: and if I have been in error, this first step to truth is the discovery of my error

There is only one problem on which all my existence, my peace, my happiness depend: to discover myself in discovering God. If I find Him I will find myself and if I find my true self I will find Him.

What can we gain by sailing to the moon if we are not able to cross the abyss that separates us from ourselves? This is the most important of all voyages of discovery, and without it, all the rest are not only useless, but disastrous.

If heaven ever wishes to grant me a boon, it will be a total effacing of the results of a mere change which fixed my eye on a certain stray piece of shelf-paper.

Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time

Perhaps I am stronger than I think

Freedom, the first-born of science.

Negative results are just what I want. They’re just as valuable to me as positive results. I can never find the thing that does the job best until I find the ones that don’t

If you can find any other view of the world which agrees over the entire range where things have already been observed, but disagrees somewhere else, you have made a great discovery.

From a long view of the history of mankind the most significant event of the nineteenth century will be judged as Maxwell’s discovery of the laws of electrodynamics.

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.

You have to ask yourself the question ‘Who am I?’ This investigation will lead in the end to the discovery of something within you which is behind the mind. Solve that great problem and you will solve all other problems.

To skip any one of the billion acts in Columbus’s chain would have wholly changed his life. I have examined his billion of possible careers, and in only one of them occurs the discovery of America.

To be certain, every day there can be a revelation or a new discovery.

The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes.

The greatest discovery of all time is that a person can change his future by merely changing his attitude.

Discovery is the ability to be puzzled by simple things.

No great discovery was ever made without a bold guess.

The nineteenth century which prides itself upon the invention of steam and evolution, might have derived a more legitimate title to fame from the discovery of pure mathematics.

Still, our knowledge of the planets was meager, and where ignorance lurks, so too do the frontiers of discovery and imagination.

Science is a philosophy of discovery. Intelligent design is a philosophy of ignorance.

Where ignorance lurks, so too do the frontiers of discovery and imagination.

Stop looking at me, swan

The greatest discovery in life is self-discovery. Until you find yourself you will always be someone else. Become yourself.