Physicist Quotes

The quarks and the stars were here when you came, and they will be here when you go. They have no sense of humor so, if you want a world where more people smile, you will have to fix things yourselves.

Richard E. Taylor

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.

Physicists have learned that certain questions cannot be asked, not because the level of our knowledge does not yet permit us to find the answer, but because such an answer simply isn't stored in nature.

Only a small part of scientific progress has resulted from planned search for specific objectives. A much more important part has been made possible by the freedom of the individual to follow his own curiosity.

Irving Langmuir

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

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

Luis Walter Alvarez

The gravitational force is the oldest force known to man and the least understood.

Peter van Nieuwenhuizen

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

One day I had the idea of radiation implosion. As in all ideas that have ever popped up in my head, there is no way I can trace the source.

John Clive Ward

All science has its origin in the needs of life.

Concepts like these can seem remote, until you explain with analogies taken from everyday life. But unfortunately some ideas do not lend themselves to familiar analogies.

Resolution of conflict, easing of stress must come from the penetration into many groups of wide and common interests which, by a process of dilution, will weaken other groups often artificially maintained.
It is of considerable importance, then, to look for large groups of individuals bound together not by temporal ties of tradition or political artificiality, but by tested ties of common interest so world-wide, indeed so universal, as to be recognized by any individual.

The plan of salvation as stated in the Bible can be seen through observation of the universe around us.

Hugh Ross (astrophysicist)

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

Above all, it's creative thinking that lies at the basis of discoveries. You must dare to think differently, see things from different sides, in order to come across fortuitous new ideas frequently. You should develop even the most stupid ideas and when you do this systematically, there will always come something useful out of it.

Simon van der Meer

There are two kinds of physicists in Berlin: on the one hand was Einstein, and on the other all the rest.

Rudolf Ladenburg

Science is the locomotive that drives our civilization.

Nicholas Metropolis

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.

If a poet could at the same time be a physicist, he might convey to others the pleasure, the satisfaction, almost the reverence, which the subject inspires. The aesthetic side of the subject is, I confess, by no means the least attractive to me. Especially is its fascination felt in the branch which deals with light.

Albert A. Michelson

Attaching a Creator to the boundary is metaphysical skullduggery.

All our civilization is based on inventions; before invention, men lived on fruits and nuts and pine cones and slept in caves.

Reginald Fessenden

The earth is under a ceaseless rain of particles from space. These cosmic rays, our only material contact with the vast universe outside our planetary system, have excited wonder and eager study...

The physicist in preparing for his work need three things, mathematics, mathematics, and mathematics.

Wilhelm Röntgen

I've lost any belief I ever had in scientific policy. I don't think you can have scientific policy. I think science is something like weeds, it just grows of its own accord … and if you've got the right atmosphere, the right situation within universities or within places like CSIRO, then it grows and develops of its own accord. And I believe that science is best left to scientists, that you cannot have managers or directors of science, it's got to be carried out and done by people with ideas, people with concepts, people who feel in their bones that they want to go ahead and develop this, that, or the other concept which occurs to them.

I think of physics as the liberal arts of technology. You understand the fundamental aspects of physics, and then you can learn the technology and understand how it relates to current world problems. I'm teaching the elementary physics that is most useful for someone who is trying to live in a technological world, to contribute to that world, and to make correct decisions.

Richard A. Muller