Joseph Priestley Quotes

An answer is invariably the parent of a whole family of new questions.

Our knowledge is a little island in a great ocean of nonknowledge.

The history of science has been one long series of violent brainstorms, as successive generations have come to terms with increasing levels of queerness in the universe.

The greater our knowledge increases the more our ignorance unfolds.

Indeed, the most important product of knowledge is ignorance.

If we would have new knowledge, we must get a whole world of new questions.

Our knowledge is a receding mirage in an expanding desert of ignorance.

The possession of knowledge does not kill the sense of wonder and mystery. There is always more mystery.

In expanding the field of knowledge we but increase the horizon of ignorance.

One can never know enough. The unknown and its call lies even in what we know.

Science moves with the spirit of an adventure characterized both by youthful arrogance and by the belief that the truth, once found, would be simple as well as pretty.

I'll never know everything. My life would be a lot worse if there was nothing I knew the answers about - and if there was nothing I didn't know the answers about.

The more you learn, the more you learn you don't know.

Pursue science because it is knowledge, because it broadens our horizons. There is so much more to be discovered.

What we know is a drop, what we don't know is an ocean.

It is one of our most exciting discoveries that local discovery leads to a complex of further discoveries.

Most of the time-- 99 percent of the time-- you just don't know how and why the threads are looped together, and that's okay. Do a good thing and something bad happens. Do a bad thing and something good happens. Do nothing and everything explodes.

The fuel on which science runs is ignorance. Science is like a hungry furnace that must be fed logs from the forests of ignorance that surround us. In the process, the clearing we call knowledge expands, but the more it expands, the longer its perimeter and the more ignorance comes into view.

The fate of all explanation is to close one door only to have another fly wide open.

Priestley [said] that each discovery we make shows us many others that should be made.

It is not enough to say that we cannot know or judge because all the information is not in. The process of gathering knowledge does not lead to knowing. A child's world spreads only a little beyond his understanding while that of a great scientist thrusts outward immeasurably. An answer is invariably the parent of a great family of new questions. So we draw worlds and fit them like tracings against the world about us, and crumple them when we find they do not fit and draw new ones.

An answer, once found, is dull; and the only remaining interest lies in a further effort to render equally dull what is still obscure enough to be intriguing.

Investigation is never complete.

In completing one discovery we never fail to get an imperfect knowledge of others.

There's a lot of disorder that comes along with wanting to know everything and wanting to try everything and wanting to experience everything, but there's a lot of knowledge that comes out of it too.