Eureka Quotes

The technical definition of heuristic is a simple procedure that helps find adequate, though often imperfect, answers to difficult questions. The word comes from the same root as eureka. ~ Daniel Kahneman

Eureka! - I have found it! ~ Archimedes

Who can know the ending until the last word has been written? Everything might change with the last word. ~ Lauren Kate

I heard sad choirs in my mind. There was nothing left of Rachel in the world. He cherished what he'd shown me, and now it was gone. Eureka. ~ Scott Kelly

Sometimes when you try not to repeat your mistakes, you forget that the original mistakes are still unfolding ~ Lauren Kate

In the folklore of science, there is the often-told story of the moment of discovery: the quickening of the pulse, the spectral luminosity of ordinary facts, the overheated, standstill second when observations crystallize and fall together into patterns, like pieces of a kaleidoscope. The apple drops from the tree. The man jumps up from a bathtub; the slippery equation balances itself.
But there is another moment of discovery - its antithesis - that is rarely recorded: the discovery of failure. It is a moment that a scientist often encounters alone. A patient's CT scan shows a relapsed lymphoma. A cell once killed by a drug begins to grow back. A child returns to the NCI with a headache. ~ Siddhartha Mukherjee

She didn't know that loss was alive in the world, a thief always about to slam you and steal everything you had. ~ Lauren Kate

I wouldn't know what to do if I weren't next to you. That's who I am."
"You can't rely on someone else to define you. Especially not me. ~ Lauren Kate

What we found in our conversations with these superachievers was that success di not come to them in the thunderclap of their Eureka! moments. Talent was just the beginning. Their sustained success depended on many factors -some in their control, and some not- but the first steps of these superachievers were to know themselves and to assess what they had to work with. Then, their progress toward their goals was furthered by their fierce dedication to the day-to-day struggle for achievement. ~ Camille Sweeney

Not belonging is the greatest gift. Always remember that. ~ Lauren Kate

Don't cry. Carry what you love about me with you; leave the pain behind. ~ Lauren Kate

The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds the most discoveries, is not "Eureka!" (I found it!) but 'That's funny ... ~ Isaac Asimov

Eureka!"s like the one Archimedes had when he stepped in a bathtub and suddenly realized the answer to the problem of testing metals' density are few and far between, and mostly it's just trying and failing and trying something else, feeding in data and eliminating variables and staring at the results, trying to figure out where you went wrong. ~ Connie Willis

So once I thought of the villain with a sense of humor, I began to think of a name and the name "the Joker" immediately came to mind. There was the association with the Joker in the deck of cards, and I probably yelled literally, 'Eureka!' because I knew I had the name and the image at the same time. ~ Jerry Robinson

Work grows out of other work, and there are very few eureka moments. ~ Anish Kapoor

Eureka .. Eureka! ~ Herge

The creative act always requires a stepping back. It's called the incubation period. The incubation period - one of the four phases of creativity - is when you're not consciously thinking of a problem, and you're letting it marinate. So this is why you hear time and again, people saying they had that "Eureka" moment in the bath, like Archimedes, or in the shower, or while going for a walk or in a coffeehouse. ~ Eric Weiner

Oh yeah - you have to write every day. Or every weekday. Because writing is a job. It's not eureka moments over and over. It's grueling work, panning for gold. You just keep at it and eventually you get a few grains. Or flakes. Or whatever gold looks like in rivers. Or maybe it's like fishing. Who cares? You just have to do it every day because you never know which day is going to be your productive day. ~ Tim Schafer

'Eureka' moments are very, very rare in my experience. It normally takes several weeks of experiments to tease out the truth, even when you have a really pretty good idea of what is going on. ~ Tim Hunt

I don't believe in the sort of "Eureka!" moment idea. I think it's a myth. I'm very suspicious that actually Archimedes had been thinking about that problem for a long time. ~ Tim Berners-Lee

It was hardly a Eureka moment, although possibly as close to one as I was going to get. ~ T.R. Richmond

There's nothing like the eureka moment of knocking off a song that didn't exist before - I won't compare it to sex, but it lasts longer. ~ Paul McCartney

I thought love was supposed to make a person more alive," Eureka said. "Your love is ... like I used to be - suicidal. ~ Lauren Kate

Real Hope stares us in the face, but we do not see him. Instead, we dig into the mound of human ideas to extract a tiny shard of insight. We tell ourselves that we have finally found the key, the thing that will make a difference. We act on the insight and embrace the delusion of lasting personal change. But before long, disappointment returns. The change was temporary and cosmetic, failing to penetrate the heart of the problem. So, we go back to the mound again, determined this time to dig in the right place. Eureka! We find another shard of insight, seemingly more profound than before. We take it home, study it, and put it into practice. But we always end up in the same place. The good news confronts us with the reality that heart-changing help will never be found in the mound. It will only be found in the Man, Christ Jesus. We must not offer people a system of redemption, a set of insights and principles. We offer people a Redeemer. In ~ Paul David Tripp

the Eureka moment felt like a thousand orgasms all at once, except not as messy. ~ John Green

The inventors of tools enhance civilization,
but the author of ideas enables them to invent. ~ Toba Beta

Scientists may have sophisticated laboratories,
But never forget 'eureka' was inspired in a bathtub. ~ Toba Beta

You keep waiting for the moral of your life to become obvious, but it never does. Work, work, work: No moral. No plot. No eureka! Just production schedules and days. You might as well be living inside a photocopier. Your lives are all they're ever going to be. ~ Douglas Coupland

Eureka' Colin said, and only in saying it did he realize he had just successfully whispered. ~ John Green

The view is endlessly fulfilling. It is like the answer to a lifetime of questions and vague cravings. ~ Don DeLillo

If Arkansas is, indeed, one big family, Eureka Springs remains its eccentric uncle. ~ Rex Nelson

I tape every game I can get my hands on. Every game that's on TV, I tape it. My daughter, Terry Hill, lives in Eureka, and she has a satellite dish, so she tapes what I can't get. I try to keep up with what everybody is doing, so if the phone rings, I'll be ready. ~ Sid Gillman

The eureka moment is two reasons why the output-based standard should be adopted: common sense and accountability. Input-based standards don't encourage energy diversity; they don't create any incentives; they don't produce solar, hydro, nuclear. ~ Frank Luntz

We should never despair. Beyond, there is hope! In the meantime, there is resilience. ("Waiting for Eureka") ~ Erik Pevernagie

I could see why Archimedes got all excited. There was nothing finer than the feeling that came rushing through you when it clicked and you suddenly understood something that had puzzled you. It made you think it just might be possible to get a handle on this old world after all. ~ Jeannette Walls

Miracles do not belong to religions. Miracles belong to the desperate, which is why every religion, every philosophy, and most importantly, every fairy tale always has a moment of salvation, a eureka, an enlightenment. We are all chasing and chasing tails, running and running in circles, until a wolf or the witch or the stepmother jumps out and trips us, and we fall flat, splat, and we lie bare and bleeding and breathless and finally, finally look and see whatever it is---salvation or eureka or enlightenment or a hunter or prince or a glass slipper---in front of us. And that's what miracles are. Not solutions, but catalysts. Not answers, but chances. ~ Amy Zhang

A eureka moment. It suddenly struck Mintz as so obvious. The executives entrusted with reviewing all of the LJM transactions- Causey, Buy, the board- approached their duties casually, giving everything just the onceover. They seemed to figure that somebody else was doing the tough analysis. But no one was.
p.389 ~ Kurt Eichenwald

Occasionally the poster pictures a pair of cyclists; and then one grasps the fact how much superior for purposes of flirtation is the modern bicycle to the old-fashioned parlour or the played-out garden gate. He and she mount their bicycles, being careful, of course, that such are of the right make. After that they have nothing to think about but the old sweet tale. Down shady lanes, through busy towns on market days, merrily roll the wheels of the "Bermondsey Company's Bottom Bracket Britain's Best," or of the "Camberwell Company's Jointless Eureka." They need no pedalling; they require no guiding. Give them their heads, and tell them what time you want to get home, and that is all they ask. While Edwin leans from his saddle to whisper the dear old nothings in Angelina's ear, while Angelina's face, to hide its blushes, is turned towards the horizon at the back, the magic bicycles pursue their even course. ~ Jerome K. Jerome

He told Eureka the only heat to use when you loved a sauce is the softest simmer. ~ Lauren Kate

The big question in cosmology in the early 1960s was did the universe have a beginning? Many scientists were instinctively opposed to the idea, because they felt that a point of creation would be a place where science broke down. One would have to appeal to religion and the hand of God to determine how the universe would start off. This was clearly a fundamental question, and it was just what I needed to complete my PhD thesis.
Roger Penrose had shown that once a dying star had contracted to a certain radius, there would inevitably be a singularity, that is a point where space and time came to an end. Surely, I thought, we already knew that nothing could prevent a massive cold star from collapsing under its own gravity until it reached a singularity of infinite density. I realised that similar arguments could be applied to the expansion of the universe. In this case, I could prove there were singularities where space–time had a beginning.
A eureka moment came in 1970, a few days after the birth of my daughter, Lucy. While getting into bed one evening, which my disability made a slow process, I realised that I could apply to black holes the casual structure theory I had developed for singularity theorems. If general relativity is correct and the energy density is positive, the surface area of the event horizon - the boundary of a black hole - has the property that it always increases when additional matter or radiation falls into it. Moreover, if two black holes coll ~ Stephen Hawking

Sometimes, at a certain point, the painting seems to have painted itself without my help - what I have called the 'eureka' moment when a sudden daring intervention has worked a miracle. ~ Joseph Plaskett

If God wants something from me, he would tell me. He wouldn't leave someone else to do this, as if an infinite being were short on time. And he would certainly not leave fallible, sinful humans to deliver an endless plethora of confused and contradictory messages. God would deliver the message himself, directly, to each and every one of us, and with such clarity as the most brilliant being in the universe could accomplish. We would all hear him out and shout "Eureka!" So obvious and well-demonstrated would his message be. It would be spoken to each of us in exactly those terms we would understand. And we would all agree on what that message was. ~ Richard Carrier

Most of us have one BIG IDEA at some point in our lives. That Eureka! moment. It comes to us all in different ways, often by chance of serendipity. ~ Peter James

Each happy chemical triggers a different good feeling. Dopamine produces the joy of finding what you seek– the "Eureka! I got it!" feeling. Endorphin produces the oblivion that masks pain– often called "euphoria." Oxytocin produces the feeling of being safe with others– now called "bonding." And serotonin produces the feeling of being respected by others–"pride. ~ Loretta Graziano Breuning

This is my eureka moment; ~ E.L. James

Once you put bacon in a salad, it's no longer a salad. It just becomes a game of 'find the bacon in the lettuce'. It's like you're panning for gold. Eureka! ~ Jim Gaffigan

Perhaps the journey towards epiphany is an unseen, steady process towards understanding. Likened to a combination safe, as you scroll the dial towards the inevitable correct combination you cannot tangibly see your progress. ~ Chris Matakas

Eureka didn't voice her perverse enjoyment at dressing as an object with a second life when it was dead. ~ Lauren Kate

Beauty is a function of truth, truth a function of beauty. They can be separated by analysis, but in the lived experience of the creative act-and of its re-creative echo in the beholder-they are inseparable as thought is inseparable from emotion. They signal, one in the language of the brain, the other of the bowels, the moment of the Eureka cry, when 'the infinite is made to blend itself with the finite'-when eternity is looking through the window of time. Whether it is a medieval stained-glass window or Newton's equation of universal gravity is a matter of upbringing and chance; both are transparent to the unprejudiced eye. ~ Arthur Koestler

So three Bagmen and a slaver go into a bar . . ." Finn began as the wails grew closer.

Selena whipped her head around, hissing, "Are you serious, Magician? They're almost here."

"What?" Finn whispered. "Just because we're about to be swarmed by bloodthirsty zombies doesn't mean we can't have a laugh."

Matthew made a eureka! hand gesture. "Zomedy!"

"Damn straight, Matto. ~ Kresley Cole

It wasn't a "Eureka!" kind of moment - it was the slow realization that the parts of me that had been empty were starting to fill up again. Yet, as gradual as this all was, there was one surreal moment that crystallized it for me - one moment where I suddenly understood what Idol meant to people and what it was doing for me. ~ Jennifer Lopez

This is Reagan country. Yeah! And perhaps it was destiny that the man who went to California's Eureka College would become so woven within and inter-linked to the Golden State. ~ Sarah Palin

Of course. I should have realized. You're so brave, Eureka. How do you handle it?"
"I don't handle it, that's how. ~ Lauren Kate

Eureka!" (I found it!) but "That's funny ... ~ Isaac Asimov

Insight, then. Wisdom. The quest for knowledge, the derivation of theorems, science and technology and all those exclusively human pursuits that must surely rest on a conscious foundation. Maybe that's what sentience would be for - if scientific breakthroughs didn't spring fully-formed from the subconscious mind, manifest themselves in dreams, as full-blown insights after a deep night's sleep. It's the most basic rule of the stymied researcher: stop thinking about the problem. Do something else. It will come to you if you just stop being conscious of it...
Don't even try to talk about the learning curve. Don't bother citing the months of deliberate practice that precede the unconscious performance, or the years of study and experiment leading up to the gift-wrapped Eureka moment. So what if your lessons are all learned consciously? Do you think that proves there's no other way? Heuristic software's been learning from experience for over a hundred years. Machines master chess, cars learn to drive themselves, statistical programs face problems and design the experiments to solve them and you think that the only path to learning leads through sentience? You're Stone-age nomads, eking out some marginal existence on the veldt - denying even the possibility of agriculture, because hunting and gathering was good enough for your parents.
Do you want to know what consciousness is for? Do you want to know the only real purpose it serves? Training wheels. You can't see both a ~ Peter Watts

It always happened like this: he would look and look for the keys to Satan's Hearse and then finally he'd just give up and say, "Fine. I'll take the fugging bus," and on his way out the door, he'd see the keys. Keys show up when you reconcile yourself to the bus; Katherines appear when you start to disbelieve the world contains another Katherine; and, sure enough, the Eureka moment arrived just as he began to accept it would never come. ~ John Green

There are occasionally eureka moments - off the top of my head, maybe Darth Vader's theme, you know, the imperial march. ~ John Williams

I was working with these very long-chain ... extended-chain polymers, where you had a lot of benzene rings in them ... Transforming a polymer solution from a liquid to a fiber requires a process called spinning ... We spun it and it spun beautifully. It [Kevlar] was very strong and very stiff-unlike anything we had made before. I knew that I had made a discovery. I didn't shout "Eureka!" but I was very excited, as was the whole laboratory excited, and management was excited, because we were looking for something new. Something different. And this was it. ~ Stephanie Kwolek

This is, if not a lifetime process, it's awfully close to it. The writer broadens, becomes deeper, becomes more observant, becomes more tempered, becomes much wiser over a period time passing. It is not something that is injected into him by a needle. It is not something that comes on a wave of flashing, explosive light one night and say, 'Huzzah! Eureka! I've got it!' and then proceeds to write the great American novel in eleven days. It doesn't work that way. It's a long, tedious, tough, frustrating process, but never, ever be put aside by the fact that it's hard. ~ Rod Serling