In his now famous 1953 Forum Address to the Graduate College of Princeton University, Velikovsky addressed the students: “The age of basic discoveries is not yet at its end, and you are not latecomers, for whom no fundamentals are left to discover….Don’t be afraid to face facts, and never lose your ability to ask questions: Why? and How? Be in this like a child..”
“Don’t be afraid of ridicule; think of the history of all great discoveries. I quote Alfred North Whitehead:
If you have had your attention directed to the novelties of thought in your own lifetime, you will have observed that almost all really new ideas have a certain aspect of foolishness when they are first produced.
Therefore dare.
Don’t persist in your idea if the facts are against it; but do persist if you see the facts gathering on your side. It may be that even the strongest opposition, that of figures, will crumble before the facts. The greatest mathematician who ever walked on these shores, Simon Newcomb, proved in 1903 that a flying machine carrying a pilot is a mathematical impossibility. In the same year of 1903 the Wright brothers, without mathematics, but by a fact, proved him wrong.”
“All fruitful ideas have been conceived in the minds of the nonconformists, for whom the known was still unknown, and who often went back to begin where others passed by, sure of their way. The truth of today was the heresy of yesterday.”
“Imagination coupled with skepticism and an ability to wonder – if you possess these, bountiful nature will hand you some of the secrets out of her inexhaustible store….”