Donald Johanson Quotes

I have learned as a journalist that if you look long enough and hard enough and carefully enough, most truths are discoverable.

My interest is in turning over a rock and seeing what's underneath. It's a personality trait more than anything; it's what made me want to become a crime reporter, even though I was not suited for it personality-wise.

History, like journalism, is ever a journey outwards, and you must report back what you find and no more.

Science is exploration. The fundamental nature of exploration is that we don't know what's there. We can guess and hope and aim to find out certain things, but we have to expect surprises.

I don't really have a metaphor for how I write, but it kinda feels like chipping away at a big dark object that I can't really see.

I opened up every can of worms I could. I got to the place where I would peel back one layer, and then another layer, and the stuff that would come up underneath was so inspiring, it made me want to write about it.

And what I wanted to do was, I wanted to explore problems and areas where we didn't have answers. In fact, where we didn't even know the right questions to ask.

What is research but a blind date with knowledge?

If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it?

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

Science is about exploring the unknown and cannot offer guarantees.

What's the use of making mysteries? It only makes people want to nose 'em out.

What I do for a living is ask questions.

We don’t know whether what we found is a chip of ice or the tip of an iceberg.

Basic research is what I'm doing when I don't know what I'm doing.

If I wasn't a writer/director, I would be an investigative journalist. There's something about being an undercover journalist. I mean, that's freakin' cool!

We sort of think that science is about the known, but science is really about exploring the unknown.

I throw a spear into the darkness. That is intuition. Then I must send an army into the darkness to find the spear. That is intellect.

I'm not a huge fan of research, but sometimes you get an idea, and then you realize you don't know anything.

In an honest search for knowledge, you quite often have to abide by ignorance for an indefinite period.

When you don't know what you're searching for, you have to look absolutely everywhere.

So much of writing is discovery. Sometimes I feel like a rat in a maze, trying to discover the way out. My little heart is beating, and I'm racing down a path thinking, this is the route, it will get me there, as I turn this way and then that.

That's, of course, the beautiful thing about science - that it's all about things we don't understand, not just the things we do understand.

That's the beautiful thing about science - that it's all about things we don't understand, not just the things we do understand.

All inquiries carry with them some element of risk.