Louis Agassiz Quotes

I have always focused on basic research, motivated by a desire to understand the world.

I was resolved to sustain and preserve in my college the bite of the mind, the chance to stand face to face with truth, the good life lived in a small, various, highly articulate and democratic society.

We are driven by the usual insatiable curiosity of the scientist, and our work is a delightful game.

The test and the use of man's education is that he finds pleasure in the exercise of his mind.

It is important to fund young researchers who want to do curiosity-driven research. Curiosity-driven research is a part of life. Some people are curious. They want to learn more about nature and society should help that. It's like art: you can learn more and bring more beauty.

I am only conscious of any satisfaction in Scientific Reading or thinking when it rounds off into a poetical generality and vagueness.

We don't ask research to do what it was never meant to do, and that is to get an idea.

Most scholarly books we read for the information or insight they contain. But some we return to simply for the pleasure of the author's company.

Sometimes I think that our laboratories are but little earthworks which men build about themselves, and whose puny tops too often conceal from view the Olympian heights; that we who work in these laboratories are but skilled artisans compared with the man who is able to observe and to draw accurate deductions from the world about him.

Why do we do basic research? To learn about ourselves.

To me, being an intellectual doesn't mean knowing about intellectual issues; it means taking pleasure in them.

In science, every question answered leads to 10 more. I love that science can never, ever be finished. From a young age, people think, 'Science is hard and boring.' We don't tell children, 'Yes, you have to learn these formulae and theorems, but then you go on to learn about nuclear reactions and stars.'

It is not his possession of knowledge, of irrefutable truth, that makes the man of science, but his persistent and recklessly critical quest for truth.

Science is to do research because of the target's fascinating and interesting characteristics.

Research in the natural sciences operates in successive approximations. We are glad to be able to offer many good problems for research by generations to come.

For adults to enjoy something, they need to have intellectual stimulation, something that's related to real life.

It is understandable that people want to know how it affects them. But as a scientist, I would hope society would be equally interested in fundamental science.

I like my mind being stimulated. I like discovering new concepts.

Turn your churches into halls of science, and devote your leisure day to the study of your own bodies, the analysis of your own minds, and the examination of the fair material world which extends around you!

Research is formalized curiosity. It is poking and prying with a purpose. It is a seeking that he who wishes may know the cosmic secrets of the world and they that dwell therein.

In order to acquire intellect one must need it. One loses it when it is no longer necessary.

We must study things we will never use, but which someone told us were important to know.

Books come at my call and return when I desire them; they are never out of humor and they answer all my questions with readiness. Some present in review before me the events of past ages; others reveal to me the secrets of Nature. These teach me how to live, and those how to die; these dispel my melancholy by their mirth, and amuse me by their sallies of wit. Some there are who prepare my soul to suffer everything, to desire nothing, and to become thoroughly acquainted with itself. In a word, they open the door to all the arts and sciences.

Science is the tool of the Western mind and with it more doors can be opened than with bare hands.

Why do we pursue information that we know will never leave our heads?