Errol Morris Quotes

Science is exploration. The fundamental nature of exploration is that we don't know what's there. We can guess and hope and aim to find out certain things, but we have to expect surprises.

I really like questions. I like people who write scripts because they're asking questions, not because they're giving answers. It's something that I look for.

Research is formalized curiosity. It is poking and prying with a purpose.

If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it?

What drives me is exploration with a purpose, more the classic Royal Geographical Society genre.

Science is about exploring the unknown and cannot offer guarantees.

All writing is that structure of revelation. There's something you want to find out. If you know everything up front in the beginning, you really don't need to read further if there's nothing else to find out.

In much of society, research means to investigate something you do not know or understand.

We sort of think that science is about the known, but science is really about exploring the unknown.

When you don't know what you're searching for, you have to look absolutely everywhere.

That's the beautiful thing about science - that it's all about things we don't understand, not just the things we do understand.

All inquiries carry with them some element of risk.

I'm not looking for answers when I show up to the set. I'm just asking the questions, over and over.

I shall be obliged to wander to the right and to the left, that I may investigate and discover the truth.

The research is the most interesting part… That’s how I work. I go some place and I walk it and I talk to people until I find what I’ve come for. Or not. Fortunately, I tend to find what I’m after.

Ignorance is the mother of research.

Take me with you. For laughs, for luck, for the unknown. Take me with you.

It was always a thrill for me, getting out of the cocoon and wandering. I'd let the wind wrap around me like fire and slip into the unknown with a moment's hesitation.

That's, of course, the beautiful thing about science - that it's all about things we don't understand, not just the things we do understand.

There is so much left of it to explore.

Discovery still happens in the writing. You start in nonfiction with a whole lot more going for you, because all the discovery isn't waiting to be made. You've made some of it in the research. As you get deeper into a piece and do more research, the notes are in the direction of the piece - you're actually writing it.

Know what it is that you are trying to find out.

When curiosity turns to serious matters, it's called research.

You dig in and you find something.

To use Newton's words, our efforts up till this moment have but turned over a pebble or shell here and there on the beach, with only a forlorn hope that under one of them was the gem we were seeking. Now we have the sieve, the minds, the hands, the time, and, particularly, the dedication to find those gems-no matter in which favorite hiding place the children of distant worlds have placed them.