James Gleick Quotes

Kids should be allowed to break stuff more often. That's a consequence of exploration. Exploration is what you do when you don't know what you're doing. That's what scientists do every day.

Science is about applying what we know and asking what we don't know.

I enjoy science, and I'm a very curious person. I always want to know the reason behind everything, big or small.

That is the essence of science: ask an impertinent question, and you are on the way to a pertinent answer.

Science is curiosity, testing and experimenting.

That's really what science is just trying to figure stuff out, and I like figuring stuff out.

As every parent knows, children begin life as uninhibited, unabashed explorers of the unknown. From the time we can walk and talk, we want to know what things are and how they work - we begin life as little scientists.

I've come to realize that artists and scientists are alike. They go through the same processes using different tools. They are both driven to answer the question, 'What if?'

The core of what we're doing is, we're playing with the world. And our curiosity in doing that is what we are most proud of and what we like to put out there.

Science is for anyone who wants to explore their world and understand things.

Running out of material for 'MythBusters' is like saying, 'We've done everything we could possibly do and we're not curious or interested in anything.' Let's hope that never happens.

I was always fascinated by how things work and learning about them.

If you don't know how it works, find out. If you're not sure if it will work, try it. If it doesn't make sense, play with it until it does. If it's not broken, break it. If it might not be true, find out.

I was like I was in science class: I was curious.

We’re taught to do things the right way. But if you want to discover something that other people haven’t, you need to do things the wrong way. Initiate a failure by doing something that’s very silly, unthinkable, naughty, dangerous. Watching why that fails can take you on a completely different path. It’s exciting, actually. To me, solving problems is a bit like a drug. You’re on it, and you can’t get off.

Children and scientists share an outlook on life. If I do this, what will happen? is both the motto of the child at play and the defining refrain of the physical scientist. ... The unfamiliar and the strange - these are the domain of all children and scientists.

For the world to be interesting, you have to be manipulating it all the time.

I'm sort of an experimenter; I thought it'd be interesting to play around and see what's there.

The true delight is in the finding out rather than in the knowing.

The idea of finding things out, I hope that will stay with me until I drop.

Science is fun. Science is curiosity. We all have natural curiosity. Science is a process of investigating. It's posing questions and coming up with a method. It's delving in.

Science is always inquiring.

A child's greatest achievements are possible in play, achievements that tomorrow will become her basic level of real action.

I love to be a scientist. I've always enjoyed being curious.

Necessity may be the mother of invention, but play is certainly the father.