Edward M. Purcell Quotes

I remember, in the winter of our first experiments, just seven years ago, looking on snow with new eyes.

I wanted to go beyond the sentiments and needs of daily life to create a sense of wonder and find a new space for design.

What is a scientist after all? It is a curious man looking through a keyhole, the keyhole of nature, trying to know what's going on.

No one who has understood even a fraction of what science has told us about the universe can fail to be in awe of both the cosmos and of science.

Wonder is from surprise, and surprise stops with experience.

For everything bad, there's a million really exciting things, whether it's someone puts out a really great book, there's a new movie, there's a new detective, the sky is unbelievably golden, or you have the best cup of coffee you ever had in your life.

If you're talking to a child, you're going, 'This is the wonder of science and here's why I'm so fascinated by it.'

I always feel the desire to look for the extraordinary in ordinary things; to suggest, not to impose, to leave always a slight touch of mystery in my paintings.

Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.

The scientist does not study nature because it is useful; he studies it because he delights in it, and he delights in it because it is beautiful.

Good God what a fine sight. I had no conception that there was such a scene in the world, and to find it in my own dominions.

Kids come out of the chute liking science. They ask, 'How come? Why? What's this?' They pick up stuff to examine it. We might not call that science, but it's discovering the world around us.

As a child, I was fascinated by any branch of physical or biological science. Even today, I find great excitement in discovering the complexity and variability of the world we live in, getting a glimpse into the deeper reality that we mostly ignore in our everyday human activities.

And when you take something like the changing colour of autumn leaves and start to ask why, you're starting off on an intellectual journey which will take you beyond that moment of visual satisfaction, while robbing nothing from that experience.

I always say to my students that being a scientist is like being an explorer, and I really mean that because, in a sense, I think in science we explore the world, the universe around us.

We made more than just scientific discoveries... we rediscovered how much people love exploration.

You should enter science because you are fascinated by it. That's what I did.

Remain in wonder if you want the mysteries to open up for you. Mysteries never open up for those who go on questioning. Questioners sooner or later end up in a library. Questioners sooner or later end up with scriptures, because scriptures are full of answers. And answers are dangerous, they kill your wonder.

Science is vastly more stimulating to the imagination than the classics.

Sometimes the public says, 'What's in it for Numero Uno? Am I going to get better television reception? Am I going to get better Internet reception?' Well, in some sense, yeah. ... All the wonders of quantum physics were learned basically from looking at atom-smasher technology. ... But let me let you in on a secret: We physicists are not driven to do this because of better color television. ... That's a spin-off. We do this because we want to understand our role and our place in the universe.

There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact.

It is characteristic of fundamental discoveries, of great achievements of the intellect, that they retain an undiminished power upon the imagination of the thinker. The memorable experiment of Faraday with a disc rotating between two poles of a magnet, which has borne such magnificent fruit, has long passed into every-day experience; yet there are certain features about this embryo of the present dynamos and motors which even today appear to us striking, and are worthy of the most careful study.

Before there can be wonders, there must be wonder.

Make curiosity a wonder-ful habit.

Wonder is like grace, in that it's not a condition we grasp; it grasps us. Wonder is not an obligatory element in the search for truth. We can seek truth without wonder's assistance. But seek is all we'll do; there will be no finding. Unless wonder descends, unlocks us ... truth is unable to enter. Wonder may be the aura of truth, the halo of it. Or something even closer. Wonder may be the caress of truth, touching our very skin.