Archive

Quotes

Most new discoveries are suddenly-seen things that were always there.

—Susanne K. Langer, 1942

Research is formalized curiosity. It is poking and prying with a purpose. 

—Zora Neale Hurston, 1942

The atavistic urge toward danger persists and its satisfaction is called adventure.

—John Steinbeck, 1941

The unknown is the largest need of the intellect.

—Emily Dickinson, 1876

Nature has planted in our minds an insatiable desire to seek the truth.

—Marcus Tullius Cicero, 45 BC

One doesn’t discover new lands without consenting to lose sight of the shore for a very long time.

—André Gide, 1926

Appearances are a glimpse of the obscure.

—Anaxagoras, c. 450 BC

How gloriously legible are the constellations of the heavens!

—Anthony Trollope, 1859

Every man takes the limits of his own field of vision for the limits of the world.

—Arthur Schopenhauer, 1851

True originality consists not in a new manner but in a new vision.

—Edith Wharton, 1924

There are truths that prove their discoverers witless.

—Karl Kraus, 1909

I learned to make my mind large, as the universe is large, so that there is room for paradoxes.

—Maxine Hong Kingston, 1976

The discovery of a new dish does more for human happiness than the discovery of a star.

—Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, 1825