Rainer Weiss Quotes

It's a phenomenon that we don't really 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.

Lots of things are mysteries. But that doesn't mean there isn't an answer to them. It's just that scientists haven't found the answer yet.

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.

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.

My belief is, you know, certain things have to be explained that's never been explained.

Existence is a series of footnotes to a vast, obscure, unfinished masterpiece.

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

It's good to have mysteries. It reminds us that there's more to the world than just making do and having a bit of fun.

The scientist should treasure the riddles he can't solve, not explain them away at the outset.

Science is about exploring the unknown and cannot offer guarantees.

One mysterious person looking at another mysterious person equals what? Another mystery.

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

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

Sometimes a disappearance can be more haunting than an apparition.

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

As long as a thing is unknown, it belongs to us in a way that well-known things do not. For we have the opportunity to fill the empty, unknown spaces for ourselves, and in them there is room for imagination and for hope.

The job is to seek mystery, evoke mystery, plant a garden in which strange plants grow and mysteries bloom. The need for mystery is greater than the need for an answer.

All inquiries carry with them some element of risk.

I was really intrigued by them, became fascinated by them because they were asking questions that couldn't be answered almost, or were making statements that you couldn't quite understand. Like, 'I'm investigating things that begin with the letter M.' That took me through a whole stratosphere of possibilities, and doing a little research and discovered that the M is mercury.

The veil is slowly rising, but as regards innumerable questions we must be content to remain in ignorance.

A true scientist is bored by knowledge; it is the assault on ignorance that motivates him - the mysteries that previous discoveries have revealed.

Mysteries abound where most we seek for answers.

Those who seek the truth run the risk of finding it.

To quote Agent Cooper, 'I have no idea where this will lead us, but I have a definite feeling it will be a place both wonderful and strange.'