Joanna Coles Quotes

I do not like to state an opinion on a matter unless I know the precise facts.

My science teachers always encouraged their classes to 'go out and discover something' because all scientific endeavors depend on observation and experimentation. Through such pursuits, anyone can find something new to science, and if it's truly novel, the entire edifice of science might have to be restructured.

Accurate intelligence is not always popular intelligence.

Don't believe anything you read on Wikipedia!

Nobody is infallible, but it is important to have trusted guides when it comes to information.

Most of us fully expect that we're going to learn things we didn't know about.

It's important to get the facts straight, a lot of information out there isn't right.

Searching and learning is where the miracle process all begins.

I know what I don't know. I would seek out, as I have, the best advice that exists. I won't get my information from the shows.

With a library it is easier to hope for serendipity than to look for a precise answer.

Get informed, not by reading The Huffington Post.

Exploration is what you do when you don't know what you're doing. That's what scientists do every day. If a scientist already knew what they were doing, they wouldn't be discovering anything, because they already knew what they were doing.

It is not enough to say that we cannot know or judge because all the information is not in. The process of gathering knowledge does not lead to knowing. A child's world spreads only a little beyond his understanding while that of a great scientist thrusts outward immeasurably. An answer is invariably the parent of a great family of new questions. So we draw worlds and fit them like tracings against the world about us, and crumple them when we find they do not fit and draw new ones.

Research is about following the gleam into the dark. It's also about being sensitive enough to know which fact is "the creative fact; the fertile fact; the fact that suggests and engenders," as opposed to the fact that deadens and kills a delicate new project.

If you do read the newspaper you are misinformed.

Don't freak out until you know the facts.

In the nature of the case, an explorer can never know what he is exploring until it has been explored.

Columbus's eggs lie around by the hundreds of thousands, but Columbuses are met with less frequency.

Order and surprise: these are two intertwined elements that make for any great library or collection.

Follow the evidence wherever it leads, and question everything.

It is an essential part of the scientific enterprise to admit ignorance, even to exult in ignorance as a challenge to future conquests.

Strange about learning; the farther I go the more I see that I never knew even existed.

If I'd done the discovery before I wrote the book, then there would be nothing to discover. It would feel dutiful instead of exciting.

When I say history is a matter of life and death, I mean this: If you really don't know history, you are a victim of whatever the authorities tell you. You have no way of checking up on them. You have no way of deciding whether there is any truth in what they are saying.

Take nothing on its looks; take everything on evidence. There's no better rule.