Be brave enough to live creatively. The creative is the place where no one else has ever been. You have to leave the city of your comfort and go into the wilderness of your intuition. You can’t get there by bus, only by hard work, risking, and by not quite knowing what you’re doing. What you’ll discover will be wonderful: yourself.
—Alan Alda (b.1936) American Actor, TV Personality, Screenwriter
Man cannot remake himself without suffering, for he is both the marble and the sculptor.
—Alexis Carrel (1873–1944) American Surgeon, Biologist
There is a land of the living and a land of the dead and the bridge is love, the only survival, the only meaning.
—Thornton Wilder (1897–1975) American Novelist, Playwright
The only real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes, in seeing the universe with the eyes of another, of hundreds of others, in seeing the hundreds of universes that each of them sees.
—Marcel Proust (1871–1922) French Novelist
If God exists and we are made in his image we can have real meaning, and we can have real knowledge through what he has communicated to us.
—Francis Schaeffer (1912–84) American Presbyterian Religious Leader, Theologian, Philosopher
Learn to see, and then you’ll know that there is no end to the new worlds of our vision.
—Carlos Castaneda (1925–98) Peruvian-born American Anthropologist, Author
One doesn’t discover new lands without consenting to lose sight of the shore for a very long time.
—Andre Gide (1869–1951) French Novelist
Most of the things worth doing in the world had been declared impossible before they were done.
—Louis Brandeis (1856–1941) American Justice, Lawyer
A human being is only interesting if he’s in contact with himself. I learned you have to trust yourself, be what you are, and do what you ought to do the way you should do it. You have got to discover you, what you do, and trust it.
—Barbra Streisand (b.1942) American Musician, Actor, Songwriter
It is the individual who knows how little they know about themselves who stands the most reasonable chance of finding out something about themselves before they die.
—S. I. Hayakawa (1906–92) Canadian-born American Academic, Elected Rep, Politician
Life’s challenges are not supposed to paralyze you; they’re supposed to help you discover who you are.
—Bernice Johnson Reagon (1942–73) American Singer, Composer, Scholar, Social Activist
The friend who holds your hand and says the wrong thing is made of a dearer stuff than the one who stays away.
—Barbara Kingsolver (b.1955) American Novelist, Poet, Essayist
Why seek to scale Mount Everest,
Queen of the Air,
Why strive to crown that cruel crest
And deathward dare?
Said Mallory of dauntless quest
‘Because it’s there.’
—Robert W. Service (1874–1958) Scottish Poet, Author
There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory mentioned, which states that this has already happened.
—Douglas Adams (1952–2001) English Author, Dramatist, Musician
In contemplation, if a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts; but if he will be content to begin with doubts, he shall end in certainties. They are ill discoverers that think there is no land, when they can see nothing but sea.
—Francis Bacon (1561–1626) English Philosopher
You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look at fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, I have lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along”. You must do the think you think you cannot do.”
—Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962) American First Lady, Diplomat, Humanitarian
What can we gain by sailing to the moon if we are not able to cross the abyss that separates us from ourselves? This is the most important of all voyages of discovery, and without it, all the rest are not only useless, but disastrous…
—Thomas Merton (1915–68) French-born American Clergyman, Poet, Social Activist, Writer
We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
—T. S. Eliot (1888–1965) American-born British Poet, Dramatist, Literary Critic
It takes courage to push yourself to places that you have never been before… to test your limits… to break through barriers. And the day came when the risk it took to remain tight inside the bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.
—Anais Nin (1903–77) French-American Essayist
For the things we have to learn before we can do them, we learn by doing them.
—Aristotle (384BCE–322BCE) Ancient Greek Philosopher, Scholar
A man of genius makes no mistakes. His errors are volitional and are the portals of discovery.
—James Joyce (1882–1941) Irish Novelist, Poet
No great discovery was ever made without a bold guess.
—Isaac Newton (1643–1727) English Physicist, Mathematician, Astronomer, Theologian
No man should go through life without once experiencing healthy, even bored solitude in the wilderness, finding himself depending solely on himself and thereby learning his true and hidden strength.
—Jack Kerouac (1922–1969) American Novelist, Poet
There is no harm in doubt and skepticism, for it is through these that new discoveries are made.
—Richard Feynman (1918–88) American Physicist
Oh what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive!
—Walter Scott (1771–1832) Scottish Novelist, Poet, Playwright, Lawyer
After all these years, I am still involved in the process of self-discovery. It’s better to explore life and make mistakes than to play it safe. Mistakes are part of the dues one pays for a full life.
—Sophia Loren (b.1934) Italian Actor
Behold the turtle. He makes progress only when he sticks his neck out.
—James Bryant Conant (1893–1978) American Chemist, Educator
The only way to discover the limits of the possible
is to go beyond them to the impossible.
—Arthur C. Clarke (1917–2008) British Author, Inventor, Futurist, Humanist
The more original a discovery, the more obvious it seems afterwards.
—Arthur Koestler
The eye sees only what the mind is prepared to comprehend.
—Robertson Davies (1913–95) Canada Journalist, Playwright, Academic, Critic, Novelist
Man cannot learn anything except by going from the known to the unknown.
—Claude Bernard (1813–78) French Physiology, Academic
All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered; the point is to discover them.
—Galileo Galilei (1564–1642) Italian Astronomer, Physicist, Mathematician
Any life, no matter how long and complex it may be, is made up of a single moment — the moment in which a man finds out, once and for all, who he is.
—Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986) Argentine Writer, Essayist, Poet
The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance — it is the illusion of knowledge.
—Daniel J. Boorstin (1914–2004) American Historian, Academic, Attorney, Writer
The significant problems we face today cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them.
—Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born Physicist
You can discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation.
—Plato (428 BCE–347 BCE) Ancient Greek Philosopher, Mathematician, Educator
It is the modest, not the presumptuous inquirer, who makes a real and safe progress in the discovery of divine truths. — He follows God in his works and in his word.
—Henry St John, 1st Viscount Bolingbroke (1678–1751) English Politician, Philosopher
Discovery consists in seeing what everyone else has seen and thinking what no one else has thought.
—Unknown