71 Discovery Quotes

Discovery isn't just about unearthing hidden treasures; it's the essence of human curiosity that drives progress and innovation. Across centuries, great thinkers, scientists, and explorers have verbalized their journeys and revelations, leaving behind a treasure trove of wisdom in the form of quotes. These words of insight don't just chronicle their adventures, but also inspire us to embark on our own quests for knowledge and understanding. In this post, we've meticulously curated a collection of the top 71 Discovery Quotes to ignite your sense of wonder and spark your personal and intellectual growth. Dive in to explore the profound and the poignant, and rediscover the world through the eyes of these luminary figures.

1. “Man cannot discover new oceans unless he has the courage to lose sight of the shore.” - Andre Gide

2. “Our real discoveries come from chaos, from going to the place that looks wrong and stupid and foolish.” - Chuck Palahniuk

3. “Perhaps, after all, America never has been discovered. I myself would say that it had merely been detected.” - Oscar Wilde

4. “The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.” - Marcel Proust

5. “When all the details fit in perfectly, something is probably wrong with the story.” - Charles Baxter

6. “One of the advantages of being disorganized is that one is always having surprising discoveries.” - A.A. Milne

7. “We are usually convinced more easily by reasons we have found ourselves than by those which have occurred to others.” - Blaise Pascal

8. “What is wanted is not the will to believe, but the will to find out, which is the exact opposite.” - Bertrand Russell

9. “The ragamuffin who sees his life as a voyage of discovery and runs the risk of failure has a better feel for faithfulness than the timid man who hides behind the law and never finds out who he is at all.” - Brennan Manning

10. “They are ill discoverers that think there is no land when they can see nothing but sea.” - Francis Bacon

11. “There's something liberating about not pretending. Dare to embarrass yourself. Risk.” - Drew Barrymore

12. “Ketika untuk pertama kalinya saya berhasil menanam padi dengan metoda tanpa pengolahan, saya merasa benar-benar puas seperti apa yang dirasakan Colombus ketika ia menemukan benua Amerika” - Masanobu Fukuoka

13. “In other studies you go as far as other have gone before you, and there is nothing more to know; but in a scientific pursuit there is continual food for discovery and wonder.” - Mary Shelley

14. “You meet a new person, you go with him and suddenly you get a whole new city...you go down new streets, you see houses you never saw before, pass places you didn't even know were there. Everything changes.” - Samuel R. Delany

15. “Sometimes a clearly defined error is the only way to discover the truth” - Benjamin Wiker

16. “Believing himself to be unseen by other bathers, he gave himself up to being alone with his body. He wriggled his toes, breathed hard through his nose, twisted his brown moustache where some drops of water still clung, and looked himself critically all over. The scrutiny seemed to satisfy him, as well as it might. I, whose only acquaintance was with bodies and minds developing, was suddenly confronted by maturity in its most undeniable form; and I wondered, what must it feel like to be him, master of those limbs which have passed beyond the need of gym and playing field, and exist for their own beauty and strength? What can they do, I thought, to be conscious of themselves?” - L.P. Hartley

17. “I believe one has to escape oneself to discover oneself.” - Rabih Alameddine

18. “There were three things sought by invaders who crossed oceans to discover America. Those were gold, gospel, glory. There are four things sought by aliens who crossed heavens to discover planet earth. Those are gold, gospel, glory, gene.” - Toba Beta

19. “The final discovery is the discovery of knowledge.” - Kedar Joshi

20. “A writer is not so much someone who has something to say as he is someone who has found a process that will bring about new things he would not have thought of if he had not started to say them.” - William Stafford

21. “The artist is always beginning. Any work of art which is not a beginning, an invention, a discovery is of little worth.” - Ezra Pound

22. “When you are inquisitive, Jane, you always make me smile. You open your eyes like an eager bird, and make every now and then a restless movement, as if answers in speech did not flow fast enough for you, and you wanted to read the tablet of one's heart.” - Charlotte Brontë

23. “The way to find a needle in a haystack is to sit down.” - Beryl Markham

24. “No great discovery was ever made without a bold guess.” - Isaac Newton

25. “It was the first time she'd discovered something she really didn't want to find, and she didn't know what to do once she'd found it.” - Jodi Picoult

26. “As time goes on, new and remoter aspects of truth are discovered which can seldom be fitted into creeds that are changeless.” - Clarence Day

27. “It is ... through the world of the imagination which takes us beyond the restrictions of provable fact, that we touch the hem of truth.” - Madeleine L'Engle

28. “The aim of science is to discover and illuminate truth. And that, I take it, is the aim of literature, whether biography or history... It seems to me, then, that there can be no separate literature of science.” - Rachel Carson

29. “In science ... "discovery" can mean finding a guppy with an extra spine in its dorsal fin.” - Thomas Hayden

30. “Lands of great discoveries are also lands of great injustices.” - Ivo Andrić

31. “It's a fact—everyone is ignorant in some way or another.Ignorance is our deepest secret.And it is one of the scariest things out there, because those of us who are most ignorant are also the ones who often don't know it or don't want to admit it.Here is a quick test:If you have never changed your mind about some fundamental tenet of your belief, if you have never questioned the basics, and if you have no wish to do so, then you are likely ignorant.Before it is too late, go out there and find someone who, in your opinion, believes, assumes, or considers certain things very strongly and very differently from you, and just have a basic honest conversation.It will do both of you good.” - Vera Nazarian

32. “The seeker embarks on a journey to find what he wants and discovers, along the way, what he needs.” - Wally Lamb

33. “The Secret Garden was what Mary called it when she was thinking of it. She liked the name, and she liked still more the feeling that when its beautiful old walls shut her in no one knew where she was. It seemed almost like being shut out of the world in some fairy place. The few books she had read and liked had been fairy-story books, and she had read of secret gardens in some of the stories. Sometimes people went to sleep in them for a hundred years, which she had thought must be rather stupid. She had no intention of going to sleep, and, in fact, she was becoming wider awake every day which passed at Misselthwaite.” - Frances Hodgson Burnett

34. “Every time you understand something, religion becomes less likely. Only with the discovery of the double helix and the ensuing genetic revolution have we had grounds for thinking that the powers held traditionally to be the exclusive property of the gods might one day be ours. . . .” - James D. Watson

35. “Imagine waking up one morning and finding a piece of yourself you didn't even know existed.” - Jodi Picoult

36. “Man has gone out to explore other worlds and other civilizations without having explored his own labyrinth of dark passages and secret chambers, and without finding what lies behind doorways that he himself has sealed.” - Stanisław Lem

37. “It turns out to be the new Planet, which, a decade and a half later, will be known first as the Georgian, and then as Herschel, after its official Discoverer, and more lately as Uranus.” - Thomas Pynchon

38. “Pride and power fall when the person falls, but discoveries of truth form legacies that can be built upon for generations.” - Criss Jami

39. “We can't impose our will on a system. We can listen to what the system tells us, and discover how its properties and our values can work together to bring forth something much better than could ever be produced by our will alone.” - Donella H. Meadows

40. “It's life that matters, nothing but life—the process of discovering, the everlasting and perpetual process, not the discovery itself, at all.” - Fyodor Dostoyevsky

41. “I was a hugely unchaperoned reader, and I would wander into my local public library and there sat the world, waiting for me to look at it, to find out about it, to discover who I might be inside it."[Patrick Ness slams library cuts (The Guardian, 23 June 2011)]” - Patrick Ness

42. “Where would we have been without the discoveries of our predecessors, and where are we going without your discoveries?” - Ogwo David Emenike

43. “Give me but a firm spot on which to stand, and I shall move the earth.” - Archimedes

44. “For the scientist, at exactly the moment of discovery—that most unstable existential moment—the external world, nature itself, deeply confirms his innermost fantastic convictions. Anchored abruptly in the world, Leviathan gasping on his hook, he is saved from extreme mental disorder by the most profound affirmation of the real.” - Richard Rhodes

45. “Robots are important also. If I don my pure-scientist hat, I would say just send robots; I'll stay down here and get the data. But nobody's ever given a parade for a robot. Nobody's ever named a high school after a robot. So when I don my public-educator hat, I have to recognize the elements of exploration that excite people. It's not only the discoveries and the beautiful photos that come down from the heavens; it's the vicarious participation in discovery itself.” - Neil deGrasse Tyson

46. “It’s the unknown that draws people.” - E.A. Bucchianeri

47. “If it's true what is said, that only the wise discover the wise, then it must also be true that the lone wolf symbolizes either the biggest fool on the planet or the biggest Einstein on the planet.” - Criss Jami

48. “How my life has been brought to undiscovered lands, and how much richer it gets - all from words printed on a page.... How a book can have 560 pages, but in only three pages change the reader's life.” - Emoke B'Racz

49. “Still round the corner there may wait, A new road or a secret gate.” - J. R. R. Tolkien

50. “I am not an outsider. I am an insider who discovered that everyone else had gone out.” - Stephen J. Day

51. “I don't know what is behind the curtain; only that I need to find out.” - Richard Paul Evans

52. “There are plenty of theories to listen to and follow but truth yearns to be discovered. When you find it, there is no doubt where to go.” - E'yen A. Gardner

53. “The world is always open, Waiting to be discovered.” - Dejan Stojanovic

54. “Art is partly communication, but only partly. The rest is discovery.” - William Golding

55. “It was the cool gray dawn, and there was a delicious sense of repose and peace in the deep pervading calm and silence of the woods. Not a leaf stirred; not a sound obtruded upon great Nature's meditation [...] Gradually the cool dim gray of the morning whitened, and as gradually sounds multiplied and life manifested itself. The marvel of Nature shaking off sleep and going to work unfolded itself to the musing boy [...] All Nature was wide awake and stirring, now; long lances of sunlight pierced down through the dense foliage far and near, and a few butterflies came fluttering upon the scene.” - Mark Twain

56. “If you knew all about it, it wouldn't be the leading edge.” - Karl Pribram

57. “Sara: Tegan just recently discovered that unicorns don’t exist. Tegan: I just thought they were extinct.” - Tegan and Sara

58. “Do not ignore inspiration, it is your guide to self discovery.” - E'yen A. Gardner

59. “What good is a secret if it remains a secret ... Secrets are meant to be discovered...” - Jocelyn Murray

60. “The secret to discovery is to never believe existing facts.” - Bryant McGill

61. “I feel like a child who has found a wonderful trail in the woods. Countless others have gone before and blazed the trail, but to the child it's as new and fresh as if it had never been walked before. The child is invariably anxious for others to join in the great adventure. It's something that can only be understood by actual experience. Those who've begun the journey, and certainly those who've gone further than I, will readily understand what I am saying.” - Randy Alcorn

62. “It was youWho opened meLooked into my soulTo study meYou revealed youTo uncover me.” - David Somorai

63. “Wieder hob sie den Blick und richtete die Lampe auf ihr Gesicht. Sie schaute zum Fenster hinüber. Ihre Züge waren jetzt fast noch deutlicher. Sie konnte die Details um ihre Nase studieren, den Mund. Die Haare. Sie sah nicht gut aus. Resigniert schaltete sie die Lampe aus und ließ sie sinken.Und da sah sie es.Ihr Spiegelbild verschwand nicht.Es blieb im Fenster hängen, noch deutlicher als zuvor.Eine Sekunge lang ließ sie sich davon einfach faszinieren.Sie schnitt eine Grimasse.Aber das Spiegelbild veränderte sich nicht.” - Johan Harstad

64. “Days passing with discovery are the days of real happiness.” - Mehmet Murat ildan

65. “I didn't know the demonsthat walked across your memory.They came from the dustwhen you were at peacein your grave.” - Susie Clevenger

66. “If there is passion, let me feel its heat.I want my heart to beat fast,my breath raspy, my skin to burn.” - Susie Clevenger

67. “Yet the laboriously sought musical epiphany rarely compares to the unsought, even unwanted tune whose ambush is violent and sudden: the song the cab driver was tuned to, the song rumbling from the speaker wedged against the fire-escape railing, the song tingling from the transistor on the beach blanket. To locate those songs again can become, with age, something like a religious quest, as suggested by the frequent use of the phrase "Holy Grail" to describe hard-to-find tracks. The collector is haunted by the knowledge that somewhere on the planet an intact chunk of his past still exists, uncorrupted by time or circumstance.” - Geoffrey O'Brien

68. “The rock I'd seen in my life looked dull because in all ignorance I'd never thought to knock it open. People have cracked ordinary New England pegmatite - big, coarse granite - and laid bare clusters of red garnets, or topaz crystals, chrysoberyl, spodumene, emerald. They held in their hands crystals that had hung in a hole in the dark for a billion years unseen. I was all for it. I would lay about me right and left with a hammer, and bash the landscape to bits. I would crack the earth's crust like a piñata and spread to the light the vivid prizes in chunks within. Rock collecting was opening the mountains. It was like diving through my own interior blank blackness to remember the startling pieces of a dream: there was a blue lake, a witch, a lighthouse, a yellow path. It was like poking about in a grimy alley and finding an old, old coin. Nothing was at it seemed. The earth was like a shut eye. Mother's not dead, dear - she's only sleeping. Pry open the thin lid and find a crystalline intelligence inside, a rayed and sidereal beauty. Crystals grew inside rock like arithmetical flowers. They lengthened and spread, adding plane to plane in awed and perfect obedience to an absolute geometry that even the stones - maybe only the stones - understood.” - Annie Dillard

69. “Every symbol, word, concept, discipline and field is only a temporary rest stop on the highway of discovery.” - Bryant McGill

70. “After you've seen behind the facade of a stage set you can't take the play seriously any more. You can't go backwards and regain your ignorance; you have to move forward.” - Zeena Schreck

71. “We must step out of our digital avatars, and come together and have face-to-face dialogue as often as possible.” - Bryant McGill