Charles Francis Richter Quotes

Breakthroughs are by definition unpredicted events. Therefore predicting breakthroughs is a particularly difficult business.

When you are on the very frontier of science, everything is chaotic.

If one does not expect the unexpected, one will not find it out, since it is not to be searched out, and difficut to compass.

Since Mashable's inception, some of our most popular articles have focused on the science behind the world's coolest innovations.

As we gain more knowledge about materials and processes in the universe, that could open up benefits that we can't even imagine. But you have to be willing to fund science without knowledge of the benefits.

If innovations were predictable, they wouldn't be discoveries.

We can know a lot. And still, no doubt, there are rash and wonderful ideas brewing somewhere; there are many surprises yet to come.

The greatest thing that science teaches you is the law of unintended consequences.

Securities, certitudes and peace do not lead to discoveries.

To witness history and science being made in front of your eyes is the rush.

Evolution is good for optimising and that is well understood. But evolution also creates things that no one knew were even possible.

We're dealing with the chaos of life, and we're rubbing it down. The deeper you rub, the more patterns you can see until you realize that it's really an organized chaos. There isn't really ever any chance to understand it all, but we're here to keep rubbing.

Technology always has unforeseen consequences, and it is not always clear, at the beginning, who or what will win, and who or what will lose.

Our real discoveries come from chaos, from going to the place that looks wrong and stupid and foolish.

The old rules may say we can’t protect our environment and promote economic growth at the same time, but in America, we’ve always used new technologies - we’ve used science; we’ve used research and development and discovery to make the old rules obsolete.

Our real discoveries come from chaos.

You can not plan to make a discovery. You do not plan innovation.

Science, while it penetrates deeply the system of things about us, sees everywhere, in the dim limits of vision, the word mystery.

Things are rarely just crazy enough to work, but they're frequently just crazy enough to fail hilariously.

The unknown was my compass. The unknown was my encyclopedia. The unnamed was my science and progress.

Every start on an untrodden path is a venture which only in unusual circumstances looks sensible and likely to succeed.

Every patient reacts a little differently, both biologically and psychologically. The only constant in cancer is inconstancy; the only certainty is a future of uncertainty, a truism for all of modern life but one made vivid by life-threatening illness.

Unexpected results are the rule rather than the exception.

The complexities of cause and effect defy analysis.

Much of the excitement we get out of our work is that we don't really know what we are doing.