Leopold Infeld Quotes

20 Sourced Quotes

Scientific imagination finds old concepts too confining, and replaces them by new ones.

Leopold Infeld
Most of the fundamental ideas of science are essentially simple, and may, as a rule, be expressed in a language comprehensible to everyone.

Leopold Infeld
Science forces us to create new ideas, new theories. Their aim is to break down the wall of contradictions which frequently blocks the way of scientific progress. All the essential ideas in science were born in a dramatic conflict between reality and our attempts at understanding.

Leopold Infeld
It must be good to die in Toronto. The transition between life and death would be continuous, painless and scarcely noticeable in this silent town. I dreaded the Sundays and prayed to God that if he chose for me to die in Toronto, he would let it be on a Saturday afternoon to save me from one more Toronto Sunday.

Leopold Infeld
By applying the statistical method we cannot foretell the behavior of an individual in a crowd. We can only foretell the chance, the probability, that it will behave in some particular manner.

Leopold Infeld
Books on physics are full of complicated mathematical formulae. But thought and ideas, not formulas, are the beginning of every physical theory.

Leopold Infeld
The electromagnetic field theory is, for the modern physicist, as real as the chair on which he sits.

Leopold Infeld
Human thought creates an ever-changing picture of the universe.

Leopold Infeld
Our knowledge is now wider and more profound than that of the physicists of the nineteenth century, but so are our doubts and difficulties.

Leopold Infeld
The importance of a problem should not be judged by the number of pages devoted to it.

Leopold Infeld
… mathematicians progress only by doubt, through humble and constant attempts to impinge on the immense domain of the unknown.

Leopold Infeld
Energy has mass and mass represents energy.

Leopold Infeld
The results of scientific research very often force a change in the philosophical view of problems which extend far beyond the restricted domain of science itself.

Leopold Infeld
The formulation of a problem is often more essential than its solution, which may be merely a matter of mathematical or experimental skill.

Leopold Infeld
There are no eternal theories in science. It always happens that some of the facts predicted by a theory are disproved by experiment. Every theory has its period of gradual development and triumph, after which it may experience a rapid decline.

Leopold Infeld
Physical concepts are free creations of the human mind, and are not, however it may seem, uniquely determined by the external world.

Leopold Infeld
With the help of physical theories we try to find our way through the maze of observed facts, to order and understand the world of our sense impressions.

Leopold Infeld
Science is not just a collection of laws, a catalogue of unrelated facts. It is a creation of the human mind, with its freely invented ideas and concepts.

Leopold Infeld
Einstein uses his concept of God more often than a Catholic priest. Once I asked him:
'Tomorrow is Sunday. Do you want me to come to you, so we can work?'
'Why not?'
'Because I thought perhaps you would like to rest on Sunday.'
Einstein settled the question by saying with a loud laugh: 'God does not rest on Sunday either.'

Leopold Infeld
Nearly every understanding is gained by a painful struggle in which belief and unbelief are dramatically interwoven.

Leopold Infeld