Fred Kavli Quotes

While it is quite reasonable for scientists to be skeptical of new ideas that do not fit within the accepted realm of scientific knowledge, the best science often emerges from situations where results carefully obtained do not fit within the accepted paradigms.

I think that's something a scientist can do because a scientist works at a border, at the edge of science, at the edge of knowledge, and so there's a lot of fun of reaching out and thinking about things that other people didn't think about. And so it has a kind of exploratory notion, kind of adventurous part in it.

Scientific facts are often described in textbooks as if they just sort of exist, like nickels someone picked up on the street. But science at the cutting edge, conducted by sharp minds probing deep into nature, is not about self-evident facts. It is about mystery and not knowing. It is about taking huge risks.

Pursue science because it is knowledge, because it broadens our horizons. There is so much more to be discovered.

Discovery follows discovery, each both raising and answering questions, each ending a long search, and each providing the new instruments for a new search.

Priestley [said] that each discovery we make shows us many others that should be made.

Discoveries are made by pursuing possibilities suggested by existing knowledge.

With science it's very important not to go down the wrong path, but the wrong path in science is a path you go down where everything you learn is already known. So you need to steer around the obvious.

The Swedish engineer who invented the zip fastener made a greater intellectual leap than many scientists do in a lifetime.

The U.S. can still maintain research institutions, such as Caltech, that are the envy of the world, yet it would be hubristic and naive to think that this position is sustainable without investing in science education and basic research.

Most entrepreneurial ideas will sound crazy, stupid and uneconomic, and then they'll turn out to be right.

From all this it follows what the general character of the problem of the development of a body of scientific knowledge is, in so far as it depends on elements internal to science itself.

Scientists have become the bearers of the torch of discovery in our quest for knowledge.

My science teachers always encouraged their classes to 'go out and discover something' because all scientific endeavors depend on observation and experimentation. Through such pursuits, anyone can find something new to science, and if it's truly novel, the entire edifice of science might have to be restructured.

Universities are in a position where they can think very creatively.

New questions can produce new scientific leaps. They can tiddlywink new flips of insight and understanding. Big ones. Paradigm shifts.

Could we have entered into the mind of Sir Isaac Newton, and have traced all the steps by which he produced his great works, we might see nothing very extraordinary in the process.

I think like a Silicon Valley entrepreneur. Failure is a great teacher. At the same time, you must remember, success will never last... Whether it's tech or fashion, it must be for the customer.

I feel like every time a door is opened by science, suddenly there are a hundred doors that need to get opened. That's what makes it an everlasting, interesting experience to go through.

There is some truth to the idea that, in the fields of science, individual contributions of great significance are possible.

Any teacher in the arts and sciences has to maintain a sense of childlikeness to be truly inventive.

Unprecedented opportunities for new scientific experience ...

When you are on the very frontier of science, everything is chaotic.

The emergence of modern science as a major new frontier of advancement that would lead, on one hand, to the discovery of new secrets of the universe, the invention of means to harness those secrets and the powers they represented, and the means to improve human health and allow humans to survive to both undertake that work and to enjoy its fruits.

If you sense a deep human need, then you go back to all the basic science. If there is some missing, then you try to do more basic science and applied science until you get it.