Dutch Physicist Quotes

Hendrik Lorentz

Peter Debye

Heike Kamerlingh Onnes

Pieter Zeeman

Frits Zernike

Paul Ehrenfest

Gerardus 't Hooft

How quick are we to learn, that is, to imitate what others have done or thought before. And how slow to understand, that is, to see the deeper connections. Slowest of all, however, are we in inventing new connections or even applying old ideas in a new field.

The theory of quanta is similar to other victories in science; for some months you smile at it, and then for years you weep.

What counts, I found, is not what you cover, but what you uncover. Covering subjects in a class can be a boring exercise, and students feel it. Uncovering the laws of physics and making them see through the equations, on the other hand, demonstrates the process of discovery, with all its newness and excitement, and students love being part of it.

In consequence of my measurements of Kerr's magnetooptical phenomena, the thought occurred to me whether the period of the light emitted by a flame might be altered when the flame was acted upon by magnetic force. It has turned out that such an action really occurs.

The standard model longs for the Higgs particle in order to be a sound theory.

I ndeed, one of the most important of our fundamental assumptions must be that the ether not only occupies all space between molecules, atoms, or electrons, but that it pervades all these particles. We shall add the hypothesis that, though the particles may move, the ether always remains at rest.

Hendrik Lorentz

According to my views, aiming at quantitative investigations, that is at establishing relations between measurements of phenomena, should take first place in the experimental practice of physics. By measurement to knowledge [door meten tot weten] I should like to write as a motto above the entrance to every physics laboratory.

Heike Kamerlingh Onnes

The gravitational force is the oldest force known to man and the least understood.

Peter van Nieuwenhuizen

Formerly an anti-Semite was somebody who hated Jews because they were Jews and had a Jewish soul. But nowadays an anti-Semite is somebody who is hated by Jews.

It was a little over fifty years ago that George Uhlenbeck and I introduced the concept of spin. It is therefore not surprising that most young physicists do not know that spin had to be introduced. They think that it was revealed in Genesis or perhaps postulated by Sir Isaac Newton, which most young physicists consider to be about simultaneous.

Samuel Abraham Goudsmit

Mathematical physics is in the first place physics and it could not exist without experimental investigations.

You can forget facts but you cannot forget understanding.

Great physics does not automatically imply complicated mathematics!

Martinus J. G. Veltman

Scientific revolutions are not made by scientists. They are declared post factum, often by philosophers and historians of science rather than by the scientists themselves.

Hendrik Casimir

Quantum mechanics as it stands would be perfect if we didn't have the quantum-gravity issue and a few other very deep fundamental problems.

Gerardus 't Hooft

Don't be impatient with me. Bear in mind that I hop around among all of you big beasts like a harmless and helpless frog who is afraid of being squashed.

In mesoscopic physics, you really need to build up intuition, because it is not the world you know.

Carlo Beenakker

The solution of the measurement problem is twofold. First, any observation or measurement requires a macroscopic measuring apparatus. A macroscopic object is also governed by quantum mechanics, but has a large number of constituents, so that each macroscopic state is a combination of an enormous number of quantum mechanical eigenstates. As a consequence the quantum mechanical interference terms between two macroscopic states virtually cancel and only probabilities survive. That is the explanation why our familiar macroscopic physics, concerned with billiard balls, deals with probabilities rather than probability amplitudes.

Nico van Kampen

Above all, it's creative thinking that lies at the basis of discoveries. You must dare to think differently, see things from different sides, in order to come across fortuitous new ideas frequently. You should develop even the most stupid ideas and when you do this systematically, there will always come something useful out of it.

Simon van der Meer

But it is not time for me to die; I have not yet finished my life's work.