Physicist Quotes

Albert Einstein

Marie Curie

Niels Bohr

Max Planck

Enrico Fermi

Erwin Schrödinger

James Clerk Maxwell

I fully agree with you concerning the pseudo-science of astrology. The interesting point is that this kind of superstition is so tenacious that it could persist through so many centuries.

Albert Einstein

It can even be thought that radium could become very dangerous in criminal hands, and here the question can be raised whether mankind benefits from knowing the secrets of Nature, whether it is ready to profit from it or whether this knowledge will not be harmful for it.

Organized religion: The world's largest pyramid scheme.

Science is a field which grows continuously with ever expanding frontiers. Further, it is truly international in scope. Any particular advance has been preceded by the contributions of those from many lands who have set firm foundations for further developments. The Nobel awards should be regarded as giving recognition to this general scientific progress as well as to the individuals involved.
Further, science is a collaborative effort. The combined results of several people working together is often much more effective than could be that of an individual scientist working alone.

A great discovery does not leap completely achieved from the brain of the scientist, as Minerva sprang, all panoplied, from the head of Jupiter; it is the fruit of accumulated preliminary work.

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

Luis Walter Alvarez

In fact, there really is not a new law of nature. It was all in the theory to begin with but nobody worked it out.

Human beings are organisms capable of manipulating internal representations of the world by means of concrete operations and can transcend the bounds of their biologically given perceptions. They can liberate themselves and construct a view of reality that conflicts with intuition, yet gives a true, more encompassing view.

A national programme which would provide television to about 80% of India's population during the next ten years would be of great significance to national integration, for implementing schemes of economic and social development and for the stimulation and promotion of electronic industry. It is of particular significance for population living in isolated rural countries

Vikram Sarabhai

The human activity that we call science is not science unless it is the uncovering or discovery of something new.

John Archibald Wheeler

A mathematician will recognize Cauchy, Gauss, Jacobi, of Helmholz after reading a few pages, just as musicians recognize, from the first few bars, Mozart, Beethoven, or Schubert.

Ludwig Boltzmann

The structure of the human brain is enormously complex. It contains about 10 billion nerve cells (neurons), which are interlinked in a vast network through 1,000 billion junctions (synapses). The whole brain can be divided into subsections, or sub-networks, which communicate with each other in a network fashion. All this results in intricate patterns of intertwined webs, networks of nesting within larger networks.

Every physicist (naturally, this equally applies to other specialities, but I re- strict myself to physicists for definitiveness) should simultaneously know, apart from theoretical physics, a wealth of facts from different branches of physics and be familiar with the newest notable accomplishments.

Vitaly Ginzburg

I see a tremendous amount of intricacy in the world and we have probably only begun to scratch at the surface of its intricacy.

The modern concept of the vacuum of space, confirmed every day by experiment, is a relativistic ether.

Robert B. Laughlin

Science aims at a vigorous adult, intelligent, serpentlike wisdom, and active interference with the course of nature; religion aims at a meek, receptive, child-hearted attitude of dovelike resignation to the Divine will.

At any one time there is a natural tendency among physicists to believe that we already know the essential ingredients of a comprehensive theory. But each time a new frontier of observation is broached we inevitably discover new phenomena which force us to modify substantially our previous conceptions. I believe this process to be unending, that the delights and challenges of unexpected discovery will continue always.

Val Logsdon Fitch

I am afraid the knockabout comedy of modern atomic physics is not very tender towards our aesthetic ideals. The stately drama of stellar evolution turns out to be more like the hair-breadth escapades in the films. The music of the spheres has a painful suggestion of — jazz.

Arthur Eddington

Another way in which science and religion are frequently contrasted is in terms of the personal and impersonal. This contrast is based on the belief that science is a dispassionate, completely detached activity in which the process of knowing is independent of the involvement or participation of the knower. In contrast to this, religious knowledge is deeply personal since it comes only through the passionate involvement and commitment of the believer in that which he knows.

William G. Pollard

Once we started to urbanize, we put ourselves on this treadmill. We traded away stability for growth. And growth requires change.

I have just joined the Board of the Population Institute because I am convinced that early stabilization of the world's population is important for the attainment of this objective.

It is unfortunate that some protesters chose to obstruct the police by linking arms and forming a human chain to prevent the police from gaining access to the tents. This is not non-violent civil disobedience.

Robert J. Birgeneau

At least 60% of the warming of the Earth observed since 1970 appears to be induced by natural cycles which are present in the solar system. A climatic stabilization or cooling until 2030-2040 is forecast by the phenomenological model.

Nicola Scafetta

It will be found that everything depends on the composition of the forces with which the particles of matter act upon one another; and from these forces, as a matter of fact, all phenomena of Nature take their origin.

Roger Joseph Boscovich

Life proceeds from life, and from nothing but life.

William Thomson, 1st Baron Kelvin