“If one looks at the special problems that were the mainsprings of progress along the oldest and most persistent lines of human inquiry, then one finds Nothing, suitably disguised as something, never far from the centre of things.”
Preface
The Book of Nothing (2009)
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John D. Barrow 58
British scientist 1952–2020Related quotes

“True progress quietly and persistently moves along without notice.”

1860s, Criticisms on "The Origin of the Species" (1864)

Source: Essays and Addresses, Vol. III- Evolution and Occultism (1913)

“If so I look for a development along these lines and will be satisfied with nothing else.”
Introduction
The Wedge (1944)
Context: There is no poetry of distinction without formal invention, for it is in the intimate form that works of art achieve their exact meaning, in which they most resemble the machine, to give language its highest dignity, its illumination in the environment to which it is native. Such war, as the arts live and breathe by, is continuous.
It may be that my interests as expressed here are pre-art. If so I look for a development along these lines and will be satisfied with nothing else.

“What is Pan-Americanism?” http://books.google.com/books?id=_VYEIml1cAkC&pg=PA97&dq=%22Politics+I+conceive+to+be+nothing+more+than+the+science+of+the+ordered+progress+of+society+along+the+lines+of+greatest+usefulness+and+convenience+to+itself%22, Address to Pan American Scientific Congress (6 January 1916)
1910s

Original: (it) Il segreto per risolvere un problema sta sempre nel trovare la strada più adatta: rifletti, prova, non arrenderti, sii costante ed otterrai.
Source: prevale.net