Stanley Schmidt Quotes

I did a lot of my writing as though I was an academic, doing some piece of research as perfectly as possible.

When you come up with a theory, you fall in love with the beauty the simplicity and elegance of it. But then you have to get a sheet of paper and pencil and crack out all the details. Hundreds and hundreds of pages. Because you have to prove it.

A good designer has a lot in common with a good researcher. Both hunt for excellence and perfection. And you have to really focus on the details, and you don't really know what the final result will be before you have it.

I get really into research. I know people say that, but I'm really into research.

A good novelist pays attention to his characters. A good biographer pays attention to the documents before her. A good critic pays close attention to the thing she's brought to evaluate.

I'm the sort of person who has to learn something properly before I show anyone.

The Japanese are the ultimate students: they analyse things in so much detail... until they have pretty much mastered whatever they are studying.

Rather big part of my time is to read scientific journals and to discover what others are doing.

Successful ecologists are successful in part because they have prepared their minds to attack scientific problems using a variety of intellectual tools.

Sound science must be our guide in choosing which problems to tackle and how to approach them.

I have friends who are science journalists, and I'm seeing stories of theirs or talking with them about ideas that they're pitching. Certain kinds of science are around me all the time, like climate change and biology.

To become an academic expert takes years of studying. Academic experts are experts in how and what others have done. They use case studies and observation to understand a subject.

All research scientists know that writing in the passive voice is artificial; they are not disembodied observers, but people doing research.

I like to be right. I try not to miss the big ideas, forget the little ones, and try to get them right. End of job description.

Mediocre theoretical physicists make no progress. They spend all their time understanding other people's progress.

Too rigid specialization is almost as bad for a historian's mind, and for his ultimate reputation, as too early an indulgence in broad generalization and synthesis.

It's hard enough to tell good stories about people who analyze information for a living. It's even harder to do a good show about people who think for a living.

Scientists learn about the world in three ways: They analyze statistical patterns in the data, they do experiments, and they learn from the data and ideas of other scientists. The recent studies show that children also learn in these ways.

Experimental science is fascinating, but I don't want to do it. I want other people to do it, and I'll read about it.

I think young writers should get other degrees first, social sciences, arts degrees or even business degrees. What you learn is research skills, a necessity because a lot of writing is about trying to find information.

When I talk with my students, I introduce a process of work I call the three R's: First comes research, then real world exploration, and finally, and perhaps most important, a fact-checking review of all that has been written.

No sociologist should think himself too good, even in his old age, to make tens of thousands of quite trivial computations in his head and perhaps for months at a time.

In politics, information is superabundant—what is needed is judgement and selectivity in dealing with that information.

It is the mark of a greatly educated person to be deeply moved by statistics.

To do successful research, you don't need to know everything, you just need to know one thing that isn't known.