Mediocre men often have the most acquired knowledge

It is what we know already that often prevents us from learning.

The experimenter who does not know what he is looking for will not understand what he finds.

When we meet a fact which contradicts a prevailing theory, we must accept the fact and abandon the theory, even when the theory is supported by great names and generally accepted.

Man can learn nothing unless he proceeds from the known to the unknown.

The terrain is everything; the germ is nothing.

Art is 'I'; science is 'we'.

A fact in itself is nothing. It is valuable only for the idea attached to it, or for the proof which it furnishes.

Those who do not know the torment of the unknown cannot have the joy of discovery.

Science increases our power in proportion as it lowers our pride.

All the vital mechanisms, varied as they are, have only one object, that of preserving constant the conditions of life in the internal environment.

I grew up cursing a lot. It felt natural. My parents told me to stop.

I haven't done period dramas back-to-back, or really anything back-to-back. You get asked to do what you're most recently famed for, so I'm careful of not repeating myself.

I have two kinds of Facebook friends: Those who know what 'DFTBA' means, and those who don't.

In the final analysis, change sticks when it becomes the way we do things around here.

The girls show up wearing nothing. I can't lie, I'm 16, I don't hate it. I don't have a girlfriend.

In antiquity and the Middle Ages reading was necessarily reading aloud.

I make my battle plans from the spirit of my sleeping soldiers

I've shot films in locations that have seemed haunted. I shot a film in a maximum-security prison in Russia. Part of it was on a psychiatric ward - there were definitely some creepy vibes there.

Courage isn't the absence of fear; it's the dealing with it.

We don't really know what we believe in or care about until what we believe in or care about is threatened, challenged, or measured.