Terry Pratchett Quotes

Winning a Nobel Prize isn't about being clever at all. It's about making... at least in physiology or medicine, it's about making discoveries, and you don't have to be clever to make a discovery, I don't think; it just comes up and punches you on the nose.

Some of the greatest things, as I understand, they have come about by serendipity, the greatest discoveries.

One sometimes finds what one is not looking for.

I find that a great part of the information I have was acquired by looking up something and finding something else on the way.

There'll always be serendipity involved in discovery.

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

Some of the most important discoveries that scientists have made were not what they were seeking at the time.

Could we know by what strange circumstances a man's genius became prepared for practical success, we should discover that the most serviceable items in his education were never entered in the bills which his father paid for.

It is true that my discovery of LSD was a chance discovery, but it was the outcome of planned experiments and these experiments took place in the framework of systematic pharmaceutical, chemical research. It could better be described as serendipity.

Serendipity... You will understand it better by the derivation than by the definition. I once read a silly fairy tale, called 'The Three Princes of Serendip': as their Highnesses traveled, they were always making discoveries, by accidents and sagacity, of things which they were not in quest of.

I've been thinking Hobbes" "On a weekend?" "Well, it wasn't on purpose

Read 500 pages every day. That's how knowledge works. It builds up like compound interest.

They say a blind hog will find the acorn one day.

What we do not call education is more precious than that which we call so. We form no guess, at the time of receiving a thought, of its comparative value. And education often wastes its effort in attempts to thwart and balk this natural magnetism, which is sure to select what belongs to it.

What possibilities exist here? What is presenting itself to me IN THIS MOMENT that I can use? In a very real sense, it's meditation in motion, the practical application of an esoteric practice. And it relies on the acceptance of serendipity. Serendipity, the effect of accidentally discovering something fortunate

It's funny how you can intensely investigate one very particular thing, and then it can lead you to other things through links and stuff like that. It's like you're going on this selective, very precise detour. But then it is strange because with it being so quick, there must be a difference.

The most valuable discoveries have found their origin in the most trivial accidents.

Many of the world's greatest discoveries have been by accident. I mean, look at the Reese's Peanut Butter Cup, or Botox.

It is true that my discovery of LSD was a chance discovery, but it was the outcome of planned experiments and these experiments took place in the framework of systematic pharmaceutical, chemical research. It could better be described as serendipity. That means that you look for something, you have a certain plan, and then you find something else, different, that may nevertheless be useful.

Art is not to be taught in Academies. It is what one looks at, not what one listens to, that makes the artist. The real schools should be the streets.

The best research is the research that you don't know that you are doing.

Any coincidencce is worth noticing. You can throw it away later if it is only a coincidence.

I spent lots of time reading the encyclopedia and really kind of an eclectic approach to learning things - not very structured.

One is not struck by the truth until prompted quite accidentally by some external event.

(The discovery of penicillin) was a triumph of accident, a fortunate occurrence which happened while I was working on a purely academic bacteriological problem.