Martin Chalfie Quotes

Most discoveries even today are a combination of serendipity and of searching.

The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not 'Eureka!' but 'That's funny...'

The concept of serendipity often crops up in research. Serendipity is the faculty or phenomenon of finding valuable or agreeable things that were not being sought. I believe that all researchers can be serendipitous.

The experience reminds me of a favorite saying: Most of the yield from research efforts comes from the coal that is mined while looking for diamonds.

There'll always be serendipity involved in discovery.

Science walks forward on two feet, namely theory and experiment. Sometimes it is one foot which is put forward first, sometimes the other, but continuous progress is only made by the use of both.

A discovery is said to be an accident meeting a prepared mind.

Research for fiction is a funny thing: you go looking for one piece of information, and find something altogether different.

I guess I'd love to be surprised by something I had never thought of.

Most technological advances in our life now come from serendipitous discoveries. That is a contraction of rocket technology and computer technology and atomic clock technology.

Experimentation is an active science.

A safe but sometimes chilly way of recalling the past is to force open a crammed drawer. If you are searching for anything in particular you don't find it, but something falls out at the back that is often more interesting.

Science is curiosity, testing and experimenting.

The fundamental essence of science, which I think we've lost in our education system, is poking something with a stick and seeing what happens. Embrace that process of inquiry.

You want experimentation. Every once in awhile, you stumble upon something that blows your mind.

If innovations were predictable, they wouldn't be discoveries.

I like the unknown. That's what Terry Malick has always really liked. He's always looking for the unexpected.

A theory can be proved by experiment; but no path leads from experiment to the birth of a theory.

Finding out that something you have just discovered is considered all but impossible is one of the joys of science.

It may be said "In research, if you know what you are doing, then you shouldn't be doing it." In a sense, if the answer turns out to be exactly what you expected, then you have learned nothing new, although you may have had your confidence increased somewhat.

The first steps in the path of discovery, and the first approximate measures, are those which add most to the existing knowledge of mankind.

Discovering the unexpected is more important than confirming the known.

There is nothing like looking, if you want to find something. You certainly usually find something, if you look, but it is not always quite the something you were after.

In the realm of scientific observation, luck is granted only to those who are prepared.