Andy Goldsworthy Quotes

In the spirit of science, there really is no such thing as a 'failed experiment.' Any test that yields valid data is a valid test.

Experimentation is an active science.

A neat and orderly laboratory is unlikely. It is, after all, so much a place of false starts and multiple attempts.

Science is a way of getting knowledge. It's a method. It's a method that really relies on making mistakes. We propose ideas, they are usually wrong, and we test them against the data. Scientists do this in a formal way. It's a way that everyone can go through life; that's how we should be teaching science from a very young age.

The art of doing science is doing the important things first.

There are so many aspects to science that I couldn't give up - the rigor, the discoveries, the teaching. The impact that science has on the world around us is something I'm enthralled with. I don't think anyone could ever take that out of me.

We are looking for ways where you can have a sandbox, where you have a restricted environment within which people can try new things, and I can try new rules. And depending on what works, then I open up the sandbox, and it becomes the new rule for the whole system.

It is important to realize that the process of 'fostering' a passion takes trial and error. It takes experience; you cannot do it all in your head. And it takes a long time.

In some ways, it's good for company culture to build things that are intended to fail because it creates an environment where it's OK to fail. A lot of people are very scared of that, especially in the workplace.

If you try and cover all your bases, like the ECB tend to do, you end up with muddled decisions.

I only sign one fight at a time.

I will bowl defensively if I have to.

I play low to the ice and that's a way I've protected myself in the past - I just felt that it was better to be safe than sorry.

We build scientific theories to organize and manipulate the world, to reduce phenomena into manageable units.

I was in the lab for a long time before I actually, like, put stuff out.

Failure in Innovation - it's a price worth paying.

Everybody's a mad scientist, and life is their lab.

The love of experiment was very strong in him [Charles Darwin], and I can remember the way he would say, "I shan't be easy till I have tried it," as if an outside force were driving him. He enjoyed experimenting much more than work which only entailed reasoning, and when he was engaged on one of his books which required argument and the marshalling of facts, he felt experimental work to be a rest or holiday.

Through all the years of experimenting and research, I never once made a discovery. I start where the last man left off... All my work was deductive, and the results I achieved were those of invention pure and simple.

Accepting trial and error means accepting error. It means taking problems in our stride when a decision doesn't work out, whether through luck or misjudgment. And that is not something human brains seem to be able to do without a struggle.

We don't want to make a mistake. Would you rather make the mistake and err on the side of caution or wait until something happens and then answer to the American people, why you didn't vet these people properly?

When I was younger, I'd get very empirical with myself. "I have a hypothesis about myself. I'll put myself in a situation, see what happens, then I'll draw a conclusion based on the empirical evidence. Hypothesis: I can play basketball." So I'd try. "Conclusion: I cannot play basketball."

Never gamble without knowing a back way out.

This is one of the most important lessons of the scientific method: if you cannot fail, you cannot learn.

Experimenters are the shock troops of science.