Physicist Quotes

Generally speaking it is better, where possible in natural science, to study objects of research independently of the accidents of their historical development.

What good does all scientific progress do if it cannot be communicated? Do we really understand the world if we cannot explain it without the requirement of long, demanding studies?

Martin Bojowald

You are invited to come to see the Earth turn, tomorrow, from three to five, at Meridian Hall of the Paris Observatory.

It is the great glory of the quest for human knowledge that, while making some small contribution to that quest, we can also continue to learn and to take pleasure in learning.

William Alfred Fowler

The scientific paradox is only an exception to some familiar but too inclusive generalization. It, therefore, has both the appeal of the riddle and the charm of surprise — the surprise, the instant the truth is seen, of a sudden and unexpected discovery....

William Jackson Humphreys

Meaning does not reside in the mathematical symbols. It resides in the cloud of thought enveloping these symbols. It is conveyed in words; these assign meaning to the symbols.

From the point of view of the physicist, a theory of matter is a policy rather than a creed; its object is to connect or co-ordinate apparently diverse phenomena, and above all to suggest, stimulate and direct experiment. It ought to furnish a compass which, if followed, will lead to observer further and further into previously unexplored regions.

All suffering is caused by the illusion of separateness, which generates fear and self-hatred, which eventually causes illness. You are the master of your life. You can do much more than you thought you could, including cure yourself of a "terminal illness".

Barbara Brennan

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

YOU MUST REMEMBER THIS: Atoms cannot be seen. To show that the world was made of particles a million times smaller than objects visible to the naked eye was so difficult that their existence was not established beyond reasonable doubt until the end of the nineteenth century.

The universe is popping all over the place.

Physical causality can be traced directly to the existence of a simple initial condition of the universe. But how does that initial condition enter into the theory?

Murray Gell-Mann

Attaching a Creator to the boundary is metaphysical skullduggery.

Although most physicists today place the probability of the existence of tachyons only slightly higher than the existence of unicorns, research into the properties of these hypothetical FTL [faster than light] particles has not been entirely fruitless.

The modern history of instruments and the patterns of their use may lack the glamour of the history of our over arching theoretical constructs. Nonetheless, these bubbling, sparking, clanking devices remain the weft and the warp of physics.

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.

People who get Nobel prizes aren't necessarily the most imaginative of people. People who sometimes find a system, develop a system, do very useful work.

The way that the background fields generates mass is rather like the way in which when light passes through a transparent medium like glass or water, it gets slowed down. It no longer travels with the fundamental velocity of light c. And that's the way to think of the generation of mass.

In the absence of a firm theoretical basis for the law [conservation of baryon number], we can only conclude that it is known to be true with great accuracy.

Maurice Goldhaber

I had vainly been seeking a description of consciousness within science; instead, what I and others have to look for is a description of science within consciousness. We must develop a science compatible with consciousness, our primary experience.

Indicative of the depth of mathematics lurking behind physicists' conjectures is that fact that the properties that one would like to establish about the renormalization theory of critical circle maps might turn out to be related to number-theoretic abysses such as the Riemann conjecture....

Predrag Cvitanović

The results of my observations are best explained by the assumption that a radiation of very great penetrating power enters our atmosphere from above...

Victor Francis Hess

We live of novelty in science. So when you do something new, you have to overcome certain beliefs that it cannot be done, that it's not interesting and so on.

Heinrich Rohrer

Science is the locomotive that drives our civilization.

Nicholas Metropolis

A scientist has the additional responsibility that comes with being a specialist: explaining science to the public, advising of its usefulness and benefits, and warning of its dangers and disadvantages. This is the responsibility of any specialist.