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Quotes

The eternal mystery of the world is its comprehensibility.

—Albert Einstein, 1936

The unknown is the largest need of the intellect.

—Emily Dickinson, 1876

When they shout “Long live progress,” always ask, “Progress of what?”

—Stanisław Jerzy Lec, 1957

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

—Marcus Tullius Cicero, 45 BC

What one man can invent another can discover.

—Arthur Conan Doyle, 1905

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

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

—Arthur Schopenhauer, 1851

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

—John Steinbeck, 1941

They are ill discoverers that think there is no land, when they can see nothing but sea.

—Francis Bacon, 1605

I am tormented with an everlasting itch for things remote. I love to sail forbidden seas and land on barbarous coasts.

—Herman Melville, 1853

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

—Zora Neale Hurston, 1942