Heinrich Hertz Quotes

18 Sourced Quotes

One cannot escape the feeling that these mathematical formulas have an independent existence and an intelligence of their own, that they are wiser than we are, wiser even than their discoverers, that we get more out of them than was originally put into them.

Heinrich Hertz
To get information for myself and for others direct from nature gives me so much more satisfaction than to be always learning it from others and for myself alone.

Heinrich Hertz
We cannot apriori demand from nature simplicity, nor can we judge what in her opinion is simple.

Heinrich Hertz
That which is gained from experience can again be annulled by experience.

Heinrich Hertz
All physicists agree that the problem of physics consists in tracing the phenomena of nature back to the simple laws of mechanics.

Heinrich Hertz
For the moment I am blundering without precise method. I repeat old experiments in this field and demonstrate others which pass through my head... I hope that, among the hundred remarkable phenomena which I come across, some light will shine from one or another.

Heinrich Hertz
To this question, "What is Maxwell's theory?" I cannot give any clearer or briefer answer than the following: Maxwell's theory is the system of Maxwell's equations.

Heinrich Hertz
The most direct, and in a sense the most important, problem which our conscious knowledge of nature should enable us to solve is the anticipation of future events, so that we may arrange our present affairs in accordance with such anticipation.

Heinrich Hertz
The rigor of science requires that we distinguish well the undraped figure of nature itself from the gay-coloured vesture with which we clothe it at our pleasure.

Heinrich Hertz
The rigour of science requires that we distinguish well the undraped figure of Nature itself from the gay-coloured vesture with which we clothe her at our pleasure.

Heinrich Hertz
I grow increasingly aware, and in more ways than expected that I am at the center of my own field; and whether it be folly or wisdom, it is a very pleasant feeling.

Heinrich Hertz
I have never forgotten what I often used to say to myself, that I would rather be a great scientific investigator than a great engineer, but would rather be a second-rate engineer than a second-rate investigator.

Heinrich Hertz
Experience is the collecting of what is similar in different particular perceptions.

Heinrich Hertz
Arithmetical symbols are written diagrams and geometrical figures are graphic formulas.

Heinrich Hertz
From the outset Maxwell's theory excelled all others in elegance and in the abundance of the relations between the various phenomena which it included.

Heinrich Hertz
Outside our consciousness there lies the cold and alien world of actual things. Between the two stretches the narrow borderland of the senses. No communication between the two worlds is possible excepting across the narrow strip. For a proper understanding of ourselves and of the world, it is of the highest importance that this borderland should be thoroughly explored.

Heinrich Hertz
Sometimes I really regret that I did not live in those times when there was still so much that was new; to be sure enough much is yet unknown, but I do not think that it will be possible to discover anything easily nowadays that would lead us to revise our entire outlook as radically as was possible in the days when telescopes and microscopes were still new.

Heinrich Hertz
It is not particularly satisfactory to see equations set forth as direct results of observation and experiment, where we used to get long mathematical deductions as apparent proofs of them. Nevertheless, I believe that we cannot, without deceiving ourselves, extract much more from known facts than is asserted in the papers referred to. If we wish to lend more color to the theory, there is nothing to prevent us from supplementing all this and aiding our powers of imagination by concrete representations of the various conceptions as to the nature of electric polarisation, the electric current, etc.

Heinrich Hertz