Often one cannot catch the unknown in a net of the known. - anon

"There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such trifling investment of fact." Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi

"It's like religion. Heresy in science is thought of as a bad thing, whereas it should be just the opposite." - Thomas Gold

Unnamed Law: If it happens, it must be possible.

" If you steal from one person, well they call that plagarism. I steal from everyone, they call that research. - Woody Guthrie

“If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about answers.”

When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong. - Arthur C. Clarke's First Law

It is through science that we prove, but through intuition that we discover. - H. Poincare

"Nothing is too wonderful to be true if it be consistent with the laws of nature." - Michael Faraday

A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it. - Max Planck

Corollary: Science advances funeral by funeral.

A man with a new idea is a crank until he succeeds. - Mark Twain

Never attribute to conspiracy that which is adequately explained by stupidity. - R. George

Don't worry about people stealing your ideas. If your ideas are that good, you'll have to ram them down people's throats. - Howard Aiken

I am tired of all this sort of thing called science here ... We have spent millions in that sort of thing for the last few years, and it is time it should be stopped. - U.S. Senator Simon Cameron, on the Smithsonian Institute (1901)

The one who says it cannot be done should never interrupt the one who's doing it!  The Roman Rule

 "I never make predictions, especially about the future" - Casey Stengle