A man of genius makes no mistakes. His errors are volitional and are the portals of discovery.

Science is a cemetery of dead ideas.

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

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

New things are always ugly.

The eternal mystery of the world is its comprehensibility.

The unknown is the largest need of the intellect.

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

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

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

One sees great things from the valley; only small things from the peak.

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

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