There are three stages in scientific discovery. First, people deny that it is true, then they deny that it is important; finally they credit the wrong person.
Our instinct may be to see the impossibility of tracking everything down as frustrating, dispiriting, perhaps even appalling, but it can just as well be viewed as almost unbearably exciting. We live on a planet that has a more or less infinite capacity to surprise. What reasoning person could possibly want it any other way?
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote emphasizes the thrilling potential of the unknown in life, suggesting that the challenges of uncertainty can also bring excitement and wonder.
In this quote, Bill Bryson highlights the dichotomy between frustration and excitement when faced with the vastness of the world's mysteries. Rather than perceiving the inability to understand or track everything as purely negative, he encourages a perspective that embraces the exhilarating possibilities of the unknown. This viewpoint inspires a curiosity about the world, celebrating its surprises and the adventures they may bring.
Themes
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can be used in a speech to inspire students to embrace the unknowns in their academic journey.
More from Bill Bryson
All quotes →For most of us the rules of English grammar are at best a dimly remembered thing. But even for those who make the rules, grammatical correctitude sometimes proves easier to urge than to achieve. Among the errors cited in this book are a number committed by some of the leading authorities of this century. If men such as Fowler and Bernstein and Quirk and Howard cannot always get their English right, is it reasonable to expect the rest of us to?
I became quietly seized with that nostalgia that overcomes you when you have reached the middle of your life and your father has recently died and it dawns on you that when he went he took some of you with him.
Open your refrigerator door, and you summon forth more light than the total amount enjoyed by most households in the 18th century. The world at night, for much of history, was a very dark place indeed.
The universe is not only queerer than we suppose; it is queerer than we can suppose
Those who sniff decay in every shift of sense or alteration of usage do the language no service. Too often for such people the notion of good English has less to do with expressing ideas clearly than with making words conform to some arbitrary pattern.
Similar quotes
Magick is the Science of understanding oneself and one's conditions. It is the Art of applying that understanding in action.
Justice renders to every one his due.
There's no such thing as an anti-war film.
Anyone who speaks in the name of others is always an impostor.
It is to the last degree distressing to contemplate the state and establishment of our navy... unless the private emolument of individuals in our navy is made superior to that in privateers, it never can become respectable; it never will become formidable. And without a respectable navy - alas, America!
We don't cut up when mad men are bred by the old legitimate regular stock religions, but we can't allow wildcat religions to indulge in such disastrous experiments.