Search Quotes (10)
As for the search for truth, I know from my own painful searching, with its many blind alleys, how hard it is to take a reliable step, be it ever so small, towards the understanding of that which is truly significant.
Letter to an interested layman (13 Feb 1934). In Helen Dukas and Banesh Hoffman, Albert Einstein: The Human Side: New Glipses From His Archives (1981), 18.
Breadth-first search is the bulldozer of science.
In Gary William Flake, The Computational Beauty of Nature (2000), 415.
Errors, like straws, upon the surface flow;
He who would search for pearls must dive below.
He who would search for pearls must dive below.
'Prologue to Anthony and Cleopatra'. All For Love (1678), edited by David M. Vieth (2001), 25.
It is open to every man to choose the direction of his striving; and also every man may draw comfort from Lessing's fine saying, that the search for truth is more precious than its possession.
From 'E=mc2', in Science Illustrated (Apr 1946). In Albert Einstein, The Einstein Reader (2006), 99.
See also: | Comfort (6) | Direction (4) | Possession (5) | Precious (2) | French Saying (30) | Strive (3) | Truth (241)
Many animals even now spring out of the soil,
Coalescing from the rains and the heat of the sun.
Small wonder, then, if more and bigger creatures,
Full-formed, arose from the new young earth and sky.
The breed, for instance, of the dappled birds
Shucked off their eggshells in the springtime, as
Crickets in summer will slip their slight cocoons
All by themselves, and search for food and life.
Earth gave you, then, the first of mortal kinds,
For all the fields were soaked with warmth and moisture.
Coalescing from the rains and the heat of the sun.
Small wonder, then, if more and bigger creatures,
Full-formed, arose from the new young earth and sky.
The breed, for instance, of the dappled birds
Shucked off their eggshells in the springtime, as
Crickets in summer will slip their slight cocoons
All by themselves, and search for food and life.
Earth gave you, then, the first of mortal kinds,
For all the fields were soaked with warmth and moisture.
On the Nature of Things, trans. Anthony M. Esolen (1995), Book 5, lines 794-803, 181.
See also: | Animal (57) | Bird (22) | Creature (15) | Cricket (2) | Earth (93) | Food (36) | Heat (22) | Life (155) | Moisture (2) | Rain (5) | Sky (7) | Soil (6) | Sun (37)
More about the selection theory: Jerne meant that the Socratic idea of learning was a fitting analogy for 'the logical basis of the selective theories of antibody formation': Can the truth (the capability to synthesize an antibody) be learned? If so, it must be assumed not to pre-exist; to be learned, it must be acquired. We are thus confronted with the difficulty to which Socrates calls attention in Meno [ ... ] namely, that it makes as little sense to search for what one does not know as to search for what one knows; what one knows, one cannot search for, since one knows it already, and what one does not know, one cannot search for, since one does not even know what to search for. Socrates resolves this difficulty by postulating that learning is nothing but recollection. The truth (the capability to synthesize an antibody) cannot be brought in, but was already inherent.
'The Natural Selection Theory', in John Cairns, Gunther S. Stent, and James D. Watson (eds.) Phage and the Origins of Molecular Biology (1966), 301.
See also: | Analogy (8) | Antibody (2) | Inherent (2) | Knowledge (330) | Learning (43) | Selection (3) | Socrates (3) | Synthesis (11) | Truth (241)
Random search for data on ... off-chance is hardly scientific. A questionnaire on 'Intellectual Immoralities' was circulated by a well-known institution. 'Intellectual Immorality No. 4' read: 'Generalizing beyond one's data'. [Wilder Dwight] Bancroft asked whether it would not be more correct to word question no. 4 'Not generalizing beyond one's data.'
From Dream to Discovery: On Being a Scientist (1964), 279. In Henry Mintzberg, essay, 'Developing Theory About the Development of Theory,' in Ken G. Smith and Michael A. Hitt, Great Minds in Management: the Theory of Process Development (2005), 361.
The alchemists in their search for gold discovered other things [of greater value].
With the phrase 'of greater value' in James Wood, Dictionary of Quotations from Ancient and Modern, English and Foreign Sources (1893), 415. The more specific description '—gunpowder, china, medicines, the laws of nature' is given for 'of greater value' in Counsels and Maxims: Being the Second Part of Arthur Schopenhauer's Aphorismen Zur Lebensweisheit translated by Thomas Bailey Saunders (2nd Ed., 1890), 16.
See also: | Alchemist (2) | Discovery (166) | Gold (10) | Gunpowder (6) | Law (134) | Medicine (127) | Nature (243)
To speculate without facts is to attempt to enter a house of which one has not the key, by wandering aimlessly round and round, searching the walls and now and then peeping through the windows. Facts are the key.
'Heredity I: The Behaviour of the Chromosomes', in Essays in Popular Science (1926), 1-2.
We find that one of the most rewarding features of being scientists these days ... is the common bond which the search for truth provides to scholars of many tongues and many heritages. In the long run, that spirit will inevitably have a constructive effect on the benefits which man can derive from knowledge of himself and his environment.
Nobel Prize Banquet Speech (10 Dec 1972).
See also: | Benefit (4) | Bond (7) | Common (4) | Effect (15) | Environment (35) | Feature (2) | Heritage (2) | Knowledge (330) | Language (38) | Mankind (34) | Reward (7) | Scholar (8) | Scientist (71) | Spirit (9) | Truth (241)
