Edward Teller Quotes

Since the discovery of Columbus, there has been no event of equal importance to the human race.

Everybody in 15th century Spain was wrong about where China was and as a result, Columbus discovered Caribbean vacations.

The great problems of the Twentieth century will have immediate relation to the discoveries of America, of Africa, and of Australia.

Christopher Columbus, as everyone knows, is honored by posterity because he was the last to discover America.

Columbus only discovered that he was in some new place. He didn't discover America.

When that book came out, it was like Columbus telling about America at the court of Ferdinand and Isabella.

Experience has shown that the trade of the East is the key to national wealth and influence.

Columbus is a town in which almost anything is likely to happen, and in which almost everything has.

Columbus felt the westward tendency more strongly than any before. He obeyed it, and found a New World for Castile and Leon.

I'll follow him to the ends of the earth,' she sobbed. Yes, darling. But the earth doesn't have any ends. Columbus fixed that.

The spirit of Columbus hovers over us to-day.

The Portuguese, Dutch and English have been for a long time year after year, shipping home the treasures of India in their big vessels. We Germans have been all along been left to watch it. Germany would do likewise, but hers would be treasures of spiritual knowledge.

In the old days, people used to risk their lives in India or in the Americas in order to bring back products which now seem to us to have been of comically little worth, such as brazilwood and pepper, which added a new range of sense experience to a civilization which had never suspected its own insipidity... From these same lands our modern Marco Polos now bring back the moral spices of which our society feels an increasing need as it is conscious of sinking further into boredom, but that this time they take the form of photographs, books, and travelers tales.

You have to know how to look even if you don't know what you're looking for.

I look for things that are very different from my life, and that are curious and idiosyncratic to me. And then, I like to find if I'm able, just a little bit, to step into a world that I know very little about. That's great fun.

You look for one thing and you find another.

There will always be those who feel more comfortable not venturing from the warmth of the hearth, but there are those who prefer to look out the window and wonder what is beyond the horizon.

A person can find anything if he takes the time, that is, if he can afford to look. And while he's looking, he's free, and he finds things he never expected.

What are we? Young or new? We must be something.

Everything that anyone would ever look for is usually where they find it.

We are apt to think it the finest era of the world when America was beginning to be discovered, when a bold sailor, even if he were wrecked, might alight on a new kingdom.

It was for Columbus, when the right hour struck, forced and propelled by this fresh life, to reveal the land where these new principles were to be brought, and where the awaited trial of the new civilization was to be made.

We wander for distraction, but we travel for fulfillment.

We explore because we are curious, not because we wish to develop grand views of reality or better widgets.