39 Inspiring Research Quotes

In the ever-evolving landscape of research, inspiration can be a critical catalyst for innovation and discovery. Whether you are delving into scientific studies, pioneering new technologies, or exploring the depths of human knowledge, a powerful quote can serve as a beacon of motivation. Within this collection, we bring together 39 of the most inspiring research quotes, crafted by visionaries and thought leaders who understand the intricacies and the beauty of the investigative process. Join us as we celebrate the spirit of inquiry and the relentless pursuit of truth with words that have fueled curiosity and fostered groundbreaking discoveries. Let these quotes inspire your next great endeavor in the world of research.

1. “A number of years ago, when I was a freshly-appointed instructor, I met, for the first time, a certain eminent historian of science. At the time I could only regard him with tolerant condescension.I was sorry of the man who, it seemed to me, was forced to hover about the edges of science. He was compelled to shiver endlessly in the outskirts, getting only feeble warmth from the distant sun of science- in-progress; while I, just beginning my research, was bathed in the heady liquid heat up at the very center of the glow.In a lifetime of being wrong at many a point, I was never more wrong. It was I, not he, who was wandering in the periphery. It was he, not I, who lived in the blaze.I had fallen victim to the fallacy of the 'growing edge;' the belief that only the very frontier of scientific advance counted; that everything that had been left behind by that advance was faded and dead.But is that true? Because a tree in spring buds and comes greenly into leaf, are those leaves therefore the tree? If the newborn twigs and their leaves were all that existed, they would form a vague halo of green suspended in mid-air, but surely that is not the tree. The leaves, by themselves, are no more than trivial fluttering decoration. It is the trunk and limbs that give the tree its grandeur and the leaves themselves their meaning.There is not a discovery in science, however revolutionary, however sparkling with insight, that does not arise out of what went before. 'If I have seen further than other men,' said Isaac Newton, 'it is because I have stood on the shoulders of giants.” - Isaac Asimov

2. “I feel very strongly indeed that a Cambridge education for our scientists should include some contact with the humanistic side. The gift of expression is important to them as scientists; the best research is wasted when it is extremely difficult to discover what it is all about ... It is even more important when scientists are called upon to play their part in the world of affairs, as is happening to an increasing extent.” - Sir William Bragg

3. “Nothing can illustrate these observations more forcibly, than a recollection of the happy conjuncture of times and circumstances, under which our Republic assumed its rank among the Nations; The foundation of our Empire was not laid in the gloomy age of Ignorance and Superstition, but at an Epoch when the rights of mankind were better understood and more clearly defined, than at any former period, the researches of the human mind, after social happiness, have been carried to a great extent, the Treasures of knowledge, acquired by the labours of Philosophers, Sages and Legislatures, through a long succession of years, are laid open for our use, and their collected wisdom may be happily applied in the Establishment of our forms of Government; the free cultivation of Letters, the unbounded extension of Commerce, the progressive refinement of Manners, the growing liberality of sentiment... have had a meliorating influence on mankind and increased the blessings of Society. At this auspicious period, the United States came into existence as a Nation, and if their Citizens should not be completely free and happy, the fault will be entirely their own.[Circular to the States, 8 June 1783 - Writings 26:484--89]” - George Washington

4. “The time will come when diligent research over long periods will bring to light things which now lie hidden. A single lifetime, even though entirely devoted to the sky, would not be enough for the investigation of so vast a subject... And so this knowledge will be unfolded only through long successive ages. There will come a time when our descendants will be amazed that we did not know things that are so plain to them... Many discoveries are reserved for ages still to come, when memory of us will have been effaced.” - seneca

5. “I don't know if you realize this, but there are some researchers - doctors - who are giving this kind of drug to volunteers, to see what the effects are, and they're doing it the proper scientific way, in clean white hospital rooms, away from trees and flowers and the wind, and they're surprised at how many of the experiments turn sour. They've never taken any sort of psychedelic themselves, needless to say. Their volunteers - they're called 'subjects,' of course - are given mescaline or LSD and they're all opened up to their surroundings, very sensitive to color and light and other people's emotions, and what are they given to react to? Metal bed-frames and plaster walls, and an occasional white coat carrying a clipboard. Sterility. Most of them say afterward that they'll never do it again.” - Alexander Shulgin

6. “Information wants to be free.” - Stewart Brand

7. “Faithfulness to the truth of history involves far more than research, however patient and scrupulous, into special facts. The narrator must seek to imbue himself with the life and spirit of the time.” - Francis Parkman

8. “I am never forget the day I first meet the great Lobachevsky.In one word he told me secret of success in mathematics:Plagiarize!Plagiarize!Let no one else's work evade your eyes!Remember why the good Lord made your eyes!So don't shade your eyes,But plagiarize, plagiarize, plagiarize -Only be sure always to call it please 'research'."[Lobachevsky]” - Tom Lehrer

9. “The effort to understand the universe is one of the very few things that lifts human life a little above the level of farce, and gives it some of the grace of tragedy. ” - Steven Weinberg

10. “This is a world where things move at their own pace, including a tiny lift Fortey and I shared with a scholarly looking elderly man with whom Fortey chatted genially and familiarly as we proceeded upwards at about the rate that sediments are laid down.When the man departed, Fortey said to me: "That was a very nice chap named Norman who's spent forty-two years studying one species of plant, St. John's wort. He retired in 1989, but he still comes in every week.""How do you spend forty-two years on one species of plant?" I asked."It's remarkable, isn't it?" Fortey agreed. He thought for a moment. "He's very thorough apparently." The lift door opened to reveal a bricked over opening. Fortey looked confounded. "That's very strange," he said. "That used to be Botany back there." He punched a button for another floor, and we found our way at length to Botany by means of back staircases and discreet trespass through yet more departments where investigators toiled lovingly over once-living objects.” - Bill Bryson

11. “An expert is one who knows more and more about less and less until he knows absolutely everything about nothing.” - Nicholas Butler

12. “Science is simply common sense at its best, that is, rigidly accurate in observation, and merciless to fallacy in logic.” - Thomas Huxley

13. “Love permeates all things and laws.Scientists should research it more.” - Toba Beta

14. “The population explosion is the primary force behind the remaining six groups of critical global events [diminishing land resources, diminishing water resources, the destruction of the atmosphere, the approaching energy crisis, social decline, and conflicts/increasing killing power].” - Ron Nielsen

15. “Who’s to say what a ‘literary life’ is? As long as you are writing often, and writing well, you don’t need to be hanging-out in libraries all the time. Nightclubs are great literary research centers. So is Ibiza!” - Roman Payne

16. “Each of our devoted investigators has had to protest the critical importance to science and the surpassing conveniences offered by the cabin: How well the hill-and-dale floor is held together by layered patches of variegated linoleum; how nicely the roof admits starlight and yet keeps out much of the rain; how smoothly the door opens when you lift firmly on the knob; how ideally the two one-room accessory structures serve as “slave” quarters for summer assistants. And what would befall the local ward of dependent woodmice if the cabin commissary were to fail?” - Durward L. Allen

17. “I would be lying if I said I didn't get a kick out of the assignment. Here I am, a "troubled youth," and my self-chosen treatment is to become a stalker. Okay, not stalker. Research Analyst.” - Lindsey Leavitt

18. “Cutting off fundamental, curiosity-driven science is like eating the seed corn. We may have a little more to eat next winter but what will we plant so we and our children will have enough to get through the winters to come?” - Carl Sagan

19. “The measure of greatness in a scientific idea is the extent to which it stimulates thought and opens up new lines of research.” - Paul Dirac

20. “I still feel glad to emphasize the duty, the defining characteristic of the pure scientist—probably to be found working in universities—who commit themselves absolutely to specialized goals, to seek the purest manifestation of any possible phenomenon that they are investigating, to create laboratories that are far more controlled than you would ever find in industry, and to ignore any constraints imposed by, as it were, realism. Further down the scale, people who understand and want to exploit results of basic science have to do a great deal more work to adapt and select the results, and combine the results from different sources, to produce something that is applicable, useful, and profitable on an acceptable time scale.” - C.A.R. Hoare

21. “Speaking of libraries: A big open-stack academic or public library is no small pleasure to work in. You're, say, trying to do a piece on something in Nevada, and you go down to C Floor, deep in the earth, and out to what a miner would call a remote working face. You find 10995.497S just where the card catalog and the online computer thought it would be, but that is only the initial nick. The book you knew about has led you to others you did not know about. To the ceiling the shelves are loaded with books about Nevada. You pull them down, one at a time, and sit on the floor and look them over until you are sitting on a pile five feet high, at which point you are late home for dinner and you get up and walk away. It's an incomparable boon to research, all that; but it is also a reason why there are almost no large open-stack libraries left in the world.” - John McPhee

22. “Si tuvieras que elegir entre la cordura, tu vida tal como la recuerdas, antes que la verdadera inestabilidad, ¿qué elegirías como manera adecuada para vivir de un estudioso?” - Elizabeth Kostova

23. “The research we do at the local level - collaboratively - is what makes formal, outside research work. Outside research cannot be installed like a car part - it has to be fitted, adjusted, and refined for the school contexts we workd in.” - Mike Schmoker

24. “In a research-poor context,isolated experience replaces professional knowledge as the dominant influence on how teachers teach.” - Mike Schmoker

25. “The library is not, as some would have it, a place for the retiring of disposition or faint of heart. It is not an ivory tower or a quiet room in a sanitarium facing away from the afternoon sun. It is, rather, a command center, a power base. A board room, a war room. An Oval Office for all who preside over their own destinies. One does not retreat from the world here; one prepares to join it at an advantage.” - Eric Burns

26. “The way to do research is to attack the facts at the point of greatest astonishment.” - Celia Green

27. “Studies show that aggressively expressing anger doesn't relieve anger but amplifies it. On the other hand, not expressing anger often allows it to disappear without leaving ugly traces.” - Gretchen Rubin

28. “Childhood trauma does not come in one single package.” - Asa Don Brown

29. “Resiliency is not gender-, age-, or intellectually specific...” - Asa Don Brown

30. “In place of practising wholesome self-abnegation, we ever make the wish the father to the thought: we receive as friendly that which agrees with, we resist with dislike that which opposes us; whereas the very reverse is required by every dictate of common sense.” - Michael Faraday

31. “You'd be amazed how much research you can get done when you have no life whatsoever.” - Ernest Cline

32. “There are certain questions that scientists may not ask, or, more accurately, for some questions, there are certain answers that scientists must a priori preclude from consideration.” - Satoshi Kanazawa

33. “The explorer who will not come back or send back his ships to tell his tale is not an explorer, only an adventurer; and his sons are born in exile.” - Ursula K. Le Guin

34. “Many questions come to mind. How influenced by contemporary religions were many of the scholars who wrote the texts available today? How many scholars have simply assumed that males have always played the dominant role in leadership and creative invention and projected this assumption into their analysis of ancient cultures? Why do so many people educated in this century think of classical Greece as the first major culture when written language was in use and great cities built at least twenty-five centuries before that time? And perhaps most important, why is it continually inferred that the age of the "pagan" religions, the time of the worship of female deities (if mentioned at all), was dark and chaotic, mysterious and evil, without the light of order and reason that supposedly accompanied the later male religions, when it has been archaeologically confirmed that the earliest law, government, medicine, agriculture, architecture, metallurgy, wheeled vehicles, ceramics, textiles and written language were initially developed in societies that worshiped the Goddess? We may find ourselves wondering about the reasons for the lack of easily available information on societies who, for thousands of years, worshiped the ancient Creatress of the Universe.” - Merlin Stone

35. “Do research. Feed your talent. Research not only wins the war on cliche, it's the key to victory over fear and it's cousin, depression.” - Robert McKee

36. “Why do they call it research if I've only done it this one time?” - Brandon Sanderson

37. “Orcas can be spotted from the shores of Seattle, Tacoma, Port Angeles, Bellingham, and the popular San Juan Islands in Washington State; and Vancouver, Victoria, Nanaimo, Campbell River, and other cities in BC. These venues not only offer easy access to the whales, they are scenic and pleasant places to live: Researchers who study orcas tend to gravitate more toward this region than, say, Iceland.” - David Kirby

38. “We must conduct research and then accept the results. If they don't stand up to experimentation, Buddha's own words must be rejected.” - Dalai Lama XIV

39. “drunk on research, exhilarated by arcane details” - Sheridan Hay