American Physicist Quotes

Playing the game is far more satisfying than reading the rules.

Astronomers are very brave and bold, and make vast assumptions based on very little data. Very clever, though. In Dennis Brian

Arthur Leonard Schawlow

Nature is as it is because this is the only possible nature consistent with itself.

The world will soon start to run out of conventionally produced, cheap oil…. We [will] start to run out of all fossil fuels by the end of this century.

David Goodstein

The ability to reduce everything to simple fundamental laws does not imply the ability to start from those laws and reconstruct the universe.

Philip Warren Anderson

Another way in which science and religion are frequently contrasted is in terms of the personal and impersonal. This contrast is based on the belief that science is a dispassionate, completely detached activity in which the process of knowing is independent of the involvement or participation of the knower. In contrast to this, religious knowledge is deeply personal since it comes only through the passionate involvement and commitment of the believer in that which he knows.

William G. Pollard

Observation, reason, and experiment make up what we call the scientific method.

It is the great glory of the quest for human knowledge that, while making some small contribution to that quest, we can also continue to learn and to take pleasure in learning.

William Alfred Fowler

Every star around us is a favorable target for human migration. You don't have to wait for just those stars that happen to have earthlink planets; they may be very few and far between.

Gerard K. O'Neill

I do not aspire to a historian's standards of completeness, accuracy, or impartiality.

The modern history of instruments and the patterns of their use may lack the glamour of the history of our over arching theoretical constructs. Nonetheless, these bubbling, sparking, clanking devices remain the weft and the warp of physics.

There is no concept in the whole field of physics which is more difficult to understand than is the concept of entropy, nor is there one which is more fundamental.

All the richness of structure observed in the natural world is not a consequence of the complexity of physical law, but instead arises from the many-times repeated application of quite simple laws.

What will prove altogether remarkable is that some very simple schemes to produce erratic numbers behave identically to some of the erratic aspects of natural phenomena.

Mitchell Feigenbaum

The rotating armatures of every generator and motor in this age of electricity are steadily proclaiming the truth of the relativity theory to all who have ears to hear.

If a poet could at the same time be a physicist, he might convey to others the pleasure, the satisfaction, almost the reverence, which the subject inspires. The aesthetic side of the subject is, I confess, by no means the least attractive to me. Especially is its fascination felt in the branch which deals with light.

Albert A. Michelson

In the absence of a firm theoretical basis for the law [conservation of baryon number], we can only conclude that it is known to be true with great accuracy.

Maurice Goldhaber

Science is the locomotive that drives our civilization.

Nicholas Metropolis

Good physics can be done if we have a good shop. … Given a good shop and good measurement equipment a sound physicist can do wonderful work.

Individual curiosity, often working without practical ends in mind, has always been a driving force for innovation.

Frederick Seitz

A patent is a legal analog of sticky fly paper: it attracts some of the lowest forms of life.

David L. Webster

MARTIANS BUILD TWO IMMENSE CANALS IN TWO YEARS Vast Engineering Works Accomplished in an Incredibly Short Time by Our Planetary Neighbors.

I would insist that any proposal for a radically new theory in physics or in any other science, contain a clear explanation of why the precedent science worked. What new domain of experience is being explored by the new science, and how does it meld with the old?

Jeremy Bernstein

The advance from drawing to painting should be gradual, and no serious attempts in colour should be made until the student has obtained proficiency in outline and in light and shade. If the artist cannot draws objects in a rather masterly way there is no point in his attempting colour.

Often we are faced with a very large body of facts, and the problem is to know upon which facts to place a value. But it is not a matter of selecting which facts with regard to the existence of extraterrestrial life — the problem here is that there are virtually no facts. It is largely a speculative matter, and I speculate that there is no life.