Luis Walter Alvarez Quotes

8 Sourced Quotes

There is no democracy in physics. We can't say that some second-rate guy has as much right to opinion as Fermi.

Luis Walter Alvarez
Dirac politely refused Robert's [Robert Oppenheimer] two proffered books: reading books, the Cambridge theoretician announced gravely, 'interfered with thought'

Luis Walter Alvarez
I'm convinced that a controlled disrespect for authority is essential to a scientist. All the good experimental physicists I have known have had an intense curiosity that no Keep Out sign could mute. Physicists do, of course, show a healthy respect for High Voltage, Radiation, and Liquid Hydrogen signs. They are not reckless. I can think of only six who have been killed on the job.

Luis Walter Alvarez
The last few centuries have seen the world freed from several scourges—slavery, for example; death by torture for heretics; and, most recently, smallpox. I am optimistic enough to believe that the next scourge to disappear will be large-scale warfare—killed by the existence and nonuse of nuclear weapons.

Luis Walter Alvarez
Paleontologists... they're really not very good scientists. They're more like stamp collectors.

Luis Walter Alvarez
Much of the work we do as scientists involves filling in the details about matters that are basically understood already, or applying standard techniques to new specific cases. But occasionally there is a question that offers an opportunity for a really major discovery.

Luis Walter Alvarez
Rocks are the key to Earth history, because solids remember but liquids and gasses forget. Retrieving these long-lost memories is the business of geologists ad paleontologists, of people who have chosen to be the historians of the Earth.

Luis Walter Alvarez
Ex libro lapidum historia mundi — from the book of rocks comes the history of the Earth.

Luis Walter Alvarez