Willis R. Whitney Quotes



Best 13 Quotes by Willis R. Whitney

“A persistent and age-old instinct makes us want to wander into regions yet untrod and read what is still unread in the manuscripts of God.”

“Any fool can show me an experiment is useless. I want a man who will try it and get something out of it.”

“I happen to be a kind of monkey. I have a monkeylike curiosity that makes me want to feel, smell, and taste things which arouse my curiosity, then to take them apart. It was born in me. Not everybody is like that, but a scientific researchist should be.”

“In the advance of civilization, it is new knowledge which paves the way, and the pavement is eternal.”

“It sometimes happens that successful search is made for unknown materials to fill well-recognized and predetermined requirements. It more often happens that the acquirement of knowledge of the previously unknown properties of a material suggests its trial for some new use. These facts strongly indicate the value of knowledge of properties of materials and indicate a way for research.”

“Necessity is not the mother of invention. Knowledge and experiment are its parents.”

“Our immediate interests are after all of but small moment. It is what we do for the future, what we add to the sum of man's knowledge, that counts most.”

“Research is appreciation.”

“Some men have thousands of reasons why they cannot do something, when all they need is one reason why they can.”

“Somebody is always reflectively monkeying with some of the parts of an infinite universe - monkeying as distinct from aping.”

“The regularity with which we conclude that further advances in a particular field are impossible seems equaled only by the regularity with which events prove that we are of too limited vision. And it always seems to be those who have the fullest opportunity to know who are the most limited in view.”

“The valuable attributes of research men are conscious ignorance and active curiosity.”

“We do not realize sufficiently that the unknown is absolutely infinite, and that new knowledge is always being produced.”

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