Authors
Topics
Lists
Pictures
Resources
British Physicist Quotes
Source
Report...
The first thoughts, which gave rise to his Principia, he had, when he retired from Cambridge in 1666 on account of the plague. As he sat alone in a garden, he fell into a speculation on the power of gravity; that as this power is not found sensibly diminished at the remotest distance from the centre of the earth to which we can rise, neither at the tops of the loftiest buildings, nor even on the summits of the highest mountains, it appeared to him reasonable to conclude that this power must extend much further than was usually thought: why not as high as the moon? said he to himself.
Henry Pemberton
Source
Report...
It is more important to know the properties of chlorine than the improprieties of Claudius!
Frederick Lindemann, 1st Viscount Cherwell
Source
Report...
It may be objected by some that I have concentrated too much on the dry bones [of thermodynamic theory], and too little on the flesh which clothes them, but I would ask such critics to concede at least that the bones have an austere beauty of their own.
Brian Pippard
Source
Report...
Compare, for instance, the accuracy with which we can describe and foretell the path of a planet with our ignorance of the movements of the atmosphere as dependent on the heat of the sun. The planet keeps to the astronomer's timetable, but the wind still bloweth almost where it listeth.
John Henry Poynting
Source
Report...
Possibly the best way to agitate a group of jaded but philosophically inclined physicists is to buy them a bottle of wine and mention interpretations of quantum mechanics. It is like opening a Pandora's box. I have been amused to discover that the number of viewpoints often exceeds the number of participants.
Artur Ekert
Source
Report...
A soap bubble is a beautiful thing. It appeals to several senses and to many kinds of minds; it is a source of delight to children, and we who know what somewhat of the mysteries of molecular physics which it helps to reveal look at it with admiration.
C. V. Boys
Source
Report...
The trouble with Physics at the present time is that there are so many workers making discoveries so fast, and important discoveries too, that it is difficult for any one worker to keep a balanced view of the state of the subject.
Owen Willans Richardson
Source
Report...
Physics tend to be dictated by fad and fashion. There are the gurus who dictate the direction in which new ideas grow.
Michael Duff
Source
Report...
Coming out of space and incident on the high atmosphere, there is a thin rain of charged particles known as the primary cosmic radiation.
C. F. Powell
Source
Report...
Viewing the laws of the electric circuit from the point at which the labours of Ohm has placed us, there is scarcely any branch of experimental science in which so many and such various phenomena are expressed by formulae of such simplicity and generality...
Charles Wheatstone
Source
Report...
Physical reality is neither some objective truth "out there" nor a purely subjective experience "in here." It is a uniquely human description of the interaction between humanity and Nature, involving elements of both inner and outer realms.
John Ellis (physicist)
Source
Report...
In The Renormalization Group method you take a structure you don't understand and convert it to another structure you don't understand. You keep doing it until you finally understand.
Michael Berry (physicist)
Source
Report...
To regard analogy as an aid to the invention of theories is as absurd as to regard melody as an aid to the composition of sonatas.
Norman Robert Campbell
Source
Report...
When scientists begin to wonder... how science is possible at all, which is ultimately what their questioning of the mathematical basis of science is about, they are searching for reassurance, for some proof that there really is a fundamental theory out there in the dark waiting to be hunted down.
David Lindley (physicist)
Source
Report...
Research is a matter of overcoming obstacles. That's what research is about. There are problems. There are difficulties. It's hard to make sense of a collection of information or whatever. Obstacles are the nature of research. Maybe that's why some people give up. There's always an obstacle. You overcome one to find there's another one.
Alexander Dalgarno
Source
Report...
The trouble is that all the investigators proceeded in exactly the same spirit, the spirit that is of scientific curiosity, and with no possibility of telling whether the issue of their work would prove them to be fiends, or dreamers, or angels.
Robert Strutt, 4th Baron Rayleigh
Source
Report...
Thus was born the vast modern subject of nuclear physics, which now gives such fertile research problems to so many of the world's physicists and, incidentally, such headaches to so many of the world's statesmen.
Patrick Blackett
Source
Report...
Science is a special kind of explanation of the things we see around us. It starts with a problem and curiosity. Something strikes the scientist as odd. It doesn't fit in with the usual explanation. Maybe harder thinking or more careful observation will resolve the problem. If it remains apuzzle, it stimulates the scientist's imagination.
Tony Hey
Source
Report...
The seemingly useless or trivial observation made by one worker leads on to a useful observation by another; and so science advances, "creeping on from point to point."
Silvanus P. Thompson
Source
Report...
Although many of the artifices employed in the works before mentioned are remarkable for their elegance, it is easy to see they are adapted only to particular objects, and that some general method, capable of being employed in every case, is still wanting.
George Green
Source
Report...
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a completely ad hoc plot device.
David Langford
Source
Report...
A quotation is a polished prefabricated unit of thought or discourse which has many connotations and associations built into it. It is thus like the text for a sermon, serving as a point of departure for many lines of thought.
Alan Lindsay Mackay
Source
Report...
Never go to a public lavatory in London. I always pee in the street. You may be fined a few pounds for committing a nuisance, but in a public lavatory you risk two years in prison because a policeman in plain clothes says you smiled at him.
Derek Jackson
Source
Report...
Astronomy is probably the oldest of all the sciences. It differs from virtually all other science disciplines in that it is not possible to carry out experimental tests in the laboratory.
Ian Morison
Source
Report...
There are very few things that can be proved rigorously in condensed matter physics.
Anthony James Leggett
1
2
3
Quote of the day
Guilt is anger directed at ourselves - at what we did or did not do. Resentment is anger directed at others - at what they did or did not do.
Peter McWilliams
Related Quotes
By profession
Physicist Quotes
Women Physicists
By nationality
American Physicists
German Physicists
French Physicists
By century
20th-century Physicists
19th-century Physicists
18th-century Physicists
Featured Authors
Lists
Predictions that didn't happen
If it's on the Internet it must be true
Remarkable Last Words (or Near-Last Words)
Picture Quotes
Confucius
Philip James Bailey
Eleanor Roosevelt
Letitia Elizabeth Landon
Popular Topics
life
love
nature
time
god
power
human
mind
work
art
heart
thought
men
day
×
Lib Quotes