The unknown is the largest need of the intellect.
—Emily Dickinson, 1876
Archive
Quotes
What one man can invent another can discover.
—Arthur Conan Doyle, 1905Appearances are a glimpse of the obscure.
—Anaxagoras, c. 450 BCI am tormented with an everlasting itch for things remote. I love to sail forbidden seas and land on barbarous coasts.
—Herman Melville, 1853There are truths that prove their discoverers witless.
—Karl Kraus, 1909Nature has planted in our minds an insatiable desire to seek the truth.
—Marcus Tullius Cicero, 45 BCThey are ill discoverers that think there is no land, when they can see nothing but sea.
—Francis Bacon, 1605Science is a cemetery of dead ideas.
—Miguel de Unamuno, 1913When they shout “Long live progress,” always ask, “Progress of what?”
—Stanisław Jerzy Lec, 1957Most new discoveries are suddenly-seen things that were always there.
—Susanne K. Langer, 1942