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"There is no scientific discoverer, no poet, no painter, no musician, who will not tell you that he found ready made his discovery or poem or picture - that it came to him from outside, and that he did not consciously create it from within."
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"But that was what research and development were like. Full of semi-triumphs and perplexing unforeseen consequences like the whole violent hiccuping thing when conjuring up fire - or the propensity for fillings to fall out of bystanders' teeth when attempting to tease a rainstorm out of a cloud."
"You certainly usually find something if you look, but it is not always quite the something you were after."
"He and I suddenly saw the whole country like an oyster for us to open; and the pearl was there, the pearl was there."
"Every symbol, word, concept, discipline and field is only a temporary rest stop on the highway of discovery."
"Discovery requires courage and acceptance that we are not in control, and that the future is uncertain."
Explore more quotes by William Kingdon Clifford
"In like manner, if I let myself believe anything on insufficient evidence, there may be no great harm done by the mere belief; it may be true after all, or I may never have occasion to exhibit it in outward acts."
"The harm which is done by credulity in a man is not confined to the fostering of a credulous character in others, and consequent support of false beliefs."
"To sum up: it is wrong always, everywhere, and for anyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence."
"This sense of power is the highest and best of pleasures when the belief on which it is founded is a true belief, and has been fairly earned by investigation."
"The danger to society is not merely that it should believe wrong things, though that is great enough; but that it should become credulous, and lose the habit of testing things and inquiring into them; for then it must sink back into savagery."
"To consider only one other such witness: the followers of the Buddha have at least as much right to appeal to individual and social experience in support of the authority of the Eastern saviour."
"A little reflection will show us that every belief, even the simplest and most fundamental, goes beyond experience when regarded as a guide to our actions."
"We may always depend on it that algebra, which cannot be translated into good English and sound common sense, is bad algebra."
"If I steal money from any person, there may be no harm done from the mere transfer of possession; he may not feel the loss, or it may prevent him from using the money badly. But I cannot help doing this great wrong towards Man, that I make myself dishonest."
"If a belief is not realized immediately in open deeds, it is stored up for the guidance of the future."
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