“…when I started doing chemistry, I did it the way I fished – for the excitement, the discovery, the adventure, for going after the most elusive catch imaginable in uncharted seas.”

— K. Barry Sharpless

Nobel lecture, 2001

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "…when I started doing chemistry, I did it the way I fished – for the excitement, the discovery, the adventure, for goin…" by K. Barry Sharpless?

K. Barry Sharpless 4

American chemist 1941

Related quotes

“Science is the most exciting and sustained enterprise of discovery in the history of our species. It is the great adventure of our time.”

Michael Crichton (1942–2008) American author, screenwriter, film producer

"Ritual Abuse, Hot Air, and Missed Opportunities: Science Views Media" Speech to the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Anaheim, California (25 January 1999)
Context: Science is the most exciting and sustained enterprise of discovery in the history of our species. It is the great adventure of our time. We live today in an era of discovery that far outshadows the discoveries of the New World five hundred years ago.

“Oh, you who've been a-fishing will indorse me
when I say
That it always is the biggest fish you catch that
gets away!”

Eugene Field A Little Book of Western Verse

Our Biggest Fish http://books.google.com/books?id=odM-AAAAYAAJ&q=%22Oh+you+who've+been+a-fishing+will+indorse+me+when+I+say+That+it+always+is+the+biggest+fish+you+catch+that+gets+away%22&pg=PA184#v=onepage, st. 4
A Little Book of Western Verse (1889)

“When I was a child, love to me was what the sea is to a fish: something you swim in while you are going about the important affairs of life.”

P. L. Travers (1899–1996) Australian-British novelist, actress and journalist

From "I Never Wrote for Children," by P. L. Travers, in the New York Times Magazine, July 2, 1978.

“To study the phenomenon of disease without books is to sail an uncharted sea, while to study books without patients is not to go to sea at all.”

William Osler (1849–1919) Canadian pathologist, physician, educator, bibliophile, historian, author, cofounder of Johns Hopkins Hospi…

"Books and Men" in Boston Medical and Surgical Journal (1901).

“When I started writing seriously, I made the major discovery of my life — that I am right and everybody else is wrong if they disagree with me. What a great thing to learn: Don't listen to anyone else, and always go your own way.”

Ray Bradbury (1920–2012) American writer

Playboy interview (1996)

“We have peered into a new world and have seen that it is more mysterious and more complex than we had imagined. Still more mysteries of the universe remain hidden. Their discovery awaits the adventurous scientists of the future. I like it this way.”

Vera Rubin (1928–2016) American astronomer

Bright Galaxies, Dark Matters (1997), preface

“I knew when I met you an adventure was going to happen.”

A.A. Milne (1882–1956) British author

“It is one of our most exciting discoveries that local discovery leads to a complex of further discoveries.”

Buckminster Fuller (1895–1983) American architect, systems theorist, author, designer, inventor and futurist

1970s, Synergetics: Explorations in the Geometry of Thinking (1975), Moral of the work
Context: It is one of our most exciting discoveries that local discovery leads to a complex of further discoveries. Corollary to this we find that we no sooner get a problem solved than we are overwhelmed with a multiplicity of additional problems in a most beautiful payoff of heretofore unknown, previously unrecognized, and as-yet unsolved problems.

“Gee, I've been asked hundreds of questions about that catch in the first game of the World Series. The one that Vic Wertz hit for Cleveland. Was it my best catch? How did I play it? Honestly, I don't rate 'em—I just try to catch 'em. When he hit the ball, I just started toward the place it was heading. And I got there.”

Willie Mays (1931) Baseball player

In "Willie 'Just Knows' His Job" by Mays, in The Daily Mail (March 25, 1955), p. 16

“Ideas are like fish.
If you want to catch little fish, you can stay in the shallow water. But if you want to catch the big fish, you've got to go deeper.”

David Lynch (1946) American filmmaker, television director, visual artist, musician and occasional actor

Introduction, p. 1
Catching the Big Fish (2006)
Source: Catching the Big Fish: Meditation, Consciousness, and Creativity
Context: Ideas are like fish.
If you want to catch little fish, you can stay in the shallow water. But if you want to catch the big fish, you've got to go deeper.
Down deep, the fish are more powerful and more pure. They're huge and abstract. And they're very beautiful.

“…when I started doing chemistry, I did it the way I fished – for the excitement, the discovery, the adventure, for going after the most elusive catch imaginable in uncharted seas.”

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

K. Barry Sharpless 4

Related quotes

Related topics