Echoes

The hidden harmony is better than the obvious.

Man knows much more than he understands.

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered; the point is to discover them.

I would prefer inarticulate wisdom to loquacious foolishness.

Strong minds discuss ideas, average minds discuss events, weak minds discuss people.

A very great deal more truth can become known than can be proven.

Genius, in truth, means little more than the faculty of perceiving in an unhabitual way.

Thinking is the hardest work there is, which is the probable reason why so few engage in it.

A part of good science is to see what everyone else can see but think what no one else has ever said.

In every systematic inquiry where there are first principles, or causes, or elements, knowledge and science result from acquiring knowledge of these.

What speaks to the soul escapes our measurements.

The adjective hasn't yet been built that can pull a weak or inaccurate noun out of a tight place.

Truth is ever to be found in simplicity, and not in the multiplicity and confusion of things.

Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn't really do it, they just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after a while. That's because they were able to connect experiences they've had and synthesize new things. And the reason they were able to do that was that they've had more experiences or they have thought more about their experiences than other people... Unfortunately, that's too rare a commodity. A lot of people in our industry haven't had very diverse experiences. So they don't have enough dots to connect, and they end up with very linear solutions without a broad perspective on the problem. The broader one's understanding of the human experience, the better design we will have.

They are ill discoverers that think there is no land, when they can see nothing but sea.

I never did anything worth doing by accident, nor did any of my inventions come indirectly through accident, except the phonograph. No, when I have, fully decided that a result is worth getting, I go about it, and make trial after trial, until it comes.

To explain all nature is too difficult a task for any one man or even for any one age. 'Tis much better to do a little with certainty, & leave the rest for others that come after you, than to explain all things by conjecture without making sure of any thing.

The imagination of nature is far, far greater than the imagination of man.

If people do not believe that mathematics is simple, it is only because they do not realize how complicated life is.

If I have seen further it is by standing on ye sholders of Giants.

He who knows all the answers has not been asked all the questions.

The finest manners in the world are awkwardness and fatuity, when contrasted with a finer intelligence.

The truth may be puzzling. It may take some work to grapple with. It may be counterintuitive. It may contradict deeply held prejudices. It may not be consonant with what we desperately want to be true. But our preferences do not determine what's true. We have a method, and that method helps us to reach not absolute truth, only asymptotic approaches to the truth — never there, just closer and closer, always finding vast new oceans of undiscovered possibilities. Cleverly designed experiments are the key.

Is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood.