Charles Caleb Colton Quotes

And perhaps, posterity will thank me for having shown it that the ancients did not know everything.

Modern civilization depends on science …

What seems new is only new to us.

We should, if possible, prove a teacher to posterity, instead of being the pupil of by-gone generations. More shall come after us than have gone before; the world is not yet middle-aged.

Those we call the ancients were really new in everything.

If the ancients left us ideas, to our credit be it spoken that we moderns are building houses for them -- structures which neither Plato nor Archimedes had dreamed possible.

He who walks may see and understand. You can study all America from one hilltop, if your eyes are open and your mind is willing to reach. But first you must walk to that hill.

The difference between ancients and moderns is that the ancients asked what have we experienced, and moderns asked what can we experience.

It is the great beauty of our science, chemistry, that advancement in it, whether in a degree great or small, instead of exhausting the subjects of research, opens the doors to further and more abundant knowledge, overflowing with beauty and utility.

Those whom we call ancient were really new in all things, and properly constituted the infancy of mankind.

We are never as modern, as far ahead of the past as we like to think we are.

Without science, there would be no such hope.

Thousands of years ago the first man discovered how to make fire. He was probably burnt at the stake he'd taught his brothers to light, but he left them a gift they had not conceived and he lifted darkness from the face of the Earth.

There are so many people who have lived and died before you. You will never have a new problem; you're not going to ever have a new problem. Somebody wrote the answer down in a book somewhere.

A Dwarfe on a Gyants shoulder sees further of the two. [A dwarf on a giant's shoulder sees farther of the two.

Fools make researches and wise men exploit them.

Curiosity is essential for progress. Only when we look to worlds beyond our own can we really know if there's room for improvement.

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

That's wisdom you can take to the grave, and dig up when you need it!

To inquire and to create; these are the grand centres around which all human pursuits revolve, or at least to these objects do they all more or less directly refer.

Technology is the only means through which you touch on new things.

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.

But there are roughly two sorts of informed people, aren't there? People who start off right by observing the pitfalls and mistakes and going round them, and the people who fall into them and get out and know they're there because of that. They both come to the same conclusions but they don't have quite the same point of view.

I am a great believer in research and innovation.

We're in a world now where it's not enough to be smart. You have to be curious.