Physicist Quotes

The increase of scientific knowledge lies not only in the occasional milestones of science, but in the efforts of the very large body of men who with love and devotion observe and study nature.

We should note that this latter type of shift was successfully amplified to a considerable extent by Russian physicists using the intense light of a ruby laser whose wavelength is close to that of a transition of the potassium atom.

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

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

I ndeed, one of the most important of our fundamental assumptions must be that the ether not only occupies all space between molecules, atoms, or electrons, but that it pervades all these particles. We shall add the hypothesis that, though the particles may move, the ether always remains at rest.

Hendrik Lorentz

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.

Your waistline may be spreading but you can't blame it on the expansion of the universe.

Richard H. Price

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.

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.

Neither physical science nor psychology can ever 'explain' human consciousness. To me then, human consciousness lies outside science, and it is here that I seek the relationship between God and man.

Nevill Francis Mott

The universe is popping all over the place.

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

Science is intelligence in action with no holds barred.

Percy Williams Bridgman

I claim that relativity and the rest of modern physics is not complicated. It can be explained very simply. It is only unusual or, put another way, it is contrary to common sense.

The rational transparency and beauty of the universe are surely too remarkable to be treated as just happy accidents.

John Polkinghorne

Quantum theory is stunningly successful. Not a single one of the theory's predictions has ever been shown wrong. One-third of our economy depends on products based on it. However, the worldview demanded by quantum theory is not only stranger than we might suppose, it's stranger than we can suppose.

Bruce Rosenblum

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.

When scientists begin to wonder... how science is possible at all, which is ultimately what their questioning of the mathematical basis of science is about, they are searching for reassurance, for some proof that there really is a fundamental theory out there in the dark waiting to be hunted down.

David Lindley (physicist)

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

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

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

Luis Walter Alvarez

"Big Crunch" is... an ugly term which hardly seems appropriate for so important an event as the end of the universe. But there is no convention as yet for a label of the moment of destruction at the end of time, and I am free to borrow the term "omega point."

Since we find it difficult to make a suitable model of a certain type, Nature must find it difficult too. This argument neglects the possibility that Nature may be cleverer than we are. It even neglects the possibility that we may be cleverer tomorrow than we are today.

MARTIANS BUILD TWO IMMENSE CANALS IN TWO YEARS Vast Engineering Works Accomplished in an Incredibly Short Time by Our Planetary Neighbors.

All science has its origin in the needs of life.