The West Wing (TV Series)

Dead Irish Writers (2002)

Robin Thomas: Sen. Jack Enlow, D-IL

Quotes 

• [while discussing the importance of funding the superconducting supercollider - a controversial scientific project that would cost billions] 

  Sen. Jack Enlow, D-IL : If we can only say what benefit this thing has. No one's been able to do that.

  Dr. Dalton Millgate : That's because great achievement has no road map. The X-Ray is pretty good, and so is penicillin, and neither were discovered with a practical objective in mind. I mean, when the electron was discovered in 1897, it was useless. And now we have an entire world run by electronics. Haydn and Mozart never studied the classics. They couldn't. They invented them.

  Sam Seaborn : Discovery.

  Dr. Dalton Millgate : What?

  Sam Seaborn : That's the thing that you were... Discovery is what. That's what this is used for. It's for discovery.