Lamar S. Smith Quotes

I think there's always room for more innovation and new things.

New discoveries in science will continue to create a thousand new frontiers for those who still would adventure.

Sometimes people invent things because they want to stay alive or feed their children or conquer the village next door. But just as often, new ideas come into the world simply because they're fun. And here's the really strange thing: many of those playful but seemingly frivolous inventions ended up sparking momentous transformations in science, in politics and society.

The future will bring new possibilities and ideas - and new terms for them.

The science of today is the technology of tomorrow.

Every great advance in science has issued from a new audacity of imagination.

With science it's very important not to go down the wrong path, but the wrong path in science is a path you go down where everything you learn is already known. So you need to steer around the obvious.

One can not impede scientific progress.

We are ever on the threshold of new journeys and new discoveries. Can you imagine the excitement of the Wright brothers on the morning of that first flight? The anticipation of Jonas Salk as he analyzed the data that demonstrated a way to prevent polio?

What makes our world so fascinating is that continuously there are novel and creative ideas spurring people to leave old ways and try something new.

Innovation is the key to the future, but basic research is the key to future innovation.

Nothing is so fatal to the progress of the human mind as to suppose that our views of science are ultimate; that there are no mysteries in nature; that our triumphs are complete, and that there are no new worlds to conquer.

Scientists are the true driving force of civilization.

We've had great successes, but our future is not about our past success. It's going to be about whether we will invent things that are really going to drive our future.

The future belongs to science and those who make friends with science.

[In natural history,] great discovery often requires a map to a hidden mine filled with gems then easily gathered by conventional tools, not a shiny new space-age machine for penetrating previously inaccessible worlds.

This would only come if you have a revolutionary change in technology like the jet brought about.

Science is the highest personification of the nation because that nation will remain the first which carries the furthest the works of thought and intelligence.

In any case, whenever technical progress opened a new window into the surrounding world, I felt the urge to look through this window, hoping to see something unexpected.

Science is a wonderful discipline, to which we are deeply indebted.

Scientific knowledge is in perpetual evolution; it finds itself changed from one day to the next.

Creative experimentation propels our culture forward. That our stories of innovation tend to glorify the breakthroughs and edit out all the experimental mistakes doesn't mean that mistakes play a trivial role. As any artist or scientist knows, without some protected, even sacred space for mistakes, innovation would cease.

Innovation makes the world go round. It brings prosperity and freedom.

As we gain more knowledge about materials and processes in the universe, that could open up benefits that we can't even imagine. But you have to be willing to fund science without knowledge of the benefits.

In the material sciences these are and have been, and are most surely likely to continue to be heroic days.