Every great advance in science has issued from a new audacity of imagination. – John Dewey, The Quest for Certainty, 1929

Great scientific discoveries have been made by men seeking to verify quite erroneous theories about the nature of things. – Aldous Huxley, "Wordsworth in the Tropics"

Columbus had all the spirit of a crusader, and, at the same time, the investigating nature of a modern man of science. – Edmund Arthur Helps

He completed the universe, he achieved the physical unity of the globe. – Lamartine