Georges Cuvier Quotes

No observational problem will not be solved by more data.

However unapproachable these problems may seem to us and however helpless we stand before them, we have, nevertheless, the firm conviction that their solution must follow by a finite number of purely logical processes.

It is a commonplace of modern technology that problems have solutions before there is knowledge of how they are to be solved.

Colleges and universities, for all the benefits they bring, accomplish far less for their students than they should. Many students graduate without being able to write well enough to satisfy their employers... reason clearly or perform competently in analyzing complex, non-technical problems.

I didn't know what kinds of questions to ask in mathematics. In physics, I could see there were things that were known and things that weren't.

It is true I had been successful on a small scale in overcoming one of the main difficulties in the new process, but there was still much to invent, and much that at that period I necessarily knew nothing about.

To the extent that you can find ways where you're making predictions, there's no substitute for testing yourself on real-world situations that you don't know the answer to in advance.

It's much more difficult to work on a broad subject than on a specific one, because even if it's hard to find the information, if you look hard enough for something specific you will find it, and you will discover things that you wouldn't have thought of before.

I have always been much better at asking questions than knowing what the answers were.

We learn more by looking for the answer to a question and not finding it than we do from learning the answer itself.

It's a manic-depressive life. You run in here, you open your incubator, your experiment makes no sense, you think, 'I hate this job.' Then ten minutes later you think, 'Well, now, maybe I'll try this or I'll try that.' You do it because you know there will be an 'a-ha!' day.

All the business of war, and indeed all the business of life, is to endeavour to find out what you don't know by what you do; that's what I called 'guess what was at the other side of the hill'.

History is only a feeble light, for the rubrics were meant to answer future problems unimagined and unimaginable

There are many people who want simple solutions, but there are none ... nor will there be.

Every problem that is interesting is also soluble

A great many decisions just can’t be made with confidence because the data just doesn’t exist …. [however] just because we don’t have the information doesn’t mean that we can’t get it.

Of necessity, a scientist typically studies one incredibly tiny sliver of some biological system, totally ensconced within one discipline, because even figuring out how one sliver works is really hard.

All through my life, when faced with a difficult decision, I always ask myself - where can I learn more. Make the choice to learn.

Research sometimes feels like an ongoing TV series in which some amazing revelations have already been made, but there are still plenty of cliff-hangers and unresolved plotlines that you want to see resolved. But unlike TV, we have to do the work ourselves to figure out what happens next.

I built a career out of knowing what I don't know.

I like thinking and being able to answer questions that are tough to answer. You have to try to figure out how to get a good answer and look intelligent.

All I know about method is that when I am not working I sometimes think I know something, but when I am working, it is quite clear I know nothing.

As to how you'll help me," he says. "Well, we have met the Answer, have we not?" He turns back to look at us, his eyes glinting. "It's time for them to meet the Ask.

Our goal is to try to bring a calm and simplicity to what are incredibly complex problems so that you're not aware really of the solution.

Given that we cannot know all the elements in a problem, we never can solve it.