Physicist Quotes

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

Wilhelm Röntgen

To know the history of science is to recognize the mortality of any claim to universal truth.

Evelyn Fox Keller

"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."

The influence of science on men's lives comes in two rather different ways — one through the ideas themselves, and the other through their material consequences.

George Paget Thomson

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.

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

International affairs must be completely permeated with scientific methodology and a democratic spirit, with a fearless weighing of all facts, views, and theories, with maximum publicity of ultimate and intermediate goals, and with a consistency of principles.

Andrei Sakharov

In this respect, the history of science, like the history of all civilization, has gone through cycles.

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

The rotating armatures of every generator and motor in this age of electricity are steadily proclaiming the truth of the relativity theory to all who have ears to hear.

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

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

Only by having a clear perspective of the future can we rightly direct our work in the present.

The language of experiment is more authoritative than any reasoning: facts can destroy our ratiocination—not vice versa.

Alessandro Volta

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.

Getting up any cliff is like a physics problem — you just got to hold on, try everything, and stick with it.

There is no concept in the whole field of physics which is more difficult to understand than is the concept of entropy, nor is there one which is more fundamental.

While it is true that theory often sets difficult, if not impossible tasks for the experiment, it does, on the other hand, often lighten the work of the experimenter by disclosing cogent relationships which make possible the indirect determination of inaccessible quantities and thus render difficult measurements unnecessary.

It is dangerous to believe hastily that anything is either possible or impossible, for there are few scientific assertions which have been proved to universal satisfaction. Our firmest scientific beliefs of today may be shattered tomorrow.

Robert H. Goddard

The more I think the more bewildered I become.

Charles Galton Darwin

The art of friendship has been little cultivated in our society.

Robert J. Havighurst

To live in an evolutionary spirit means to engage with full ambition and without any reserve in the structure of the present, and yet to let go and flow into a new structure when the right time has come.

The twofold nature of light as a light-wave and as a light-quantum is thus extended to electrons and, further, to atoms: their wave-nature is asserting itself more and more, theoretically and experimentally, as concurrent with their corpuscular nature.

Arnold Sommerfeld

The problem of transmitting scientific knowledge is a very difficult business.

Jack Steinberger

A simple calculation shows that from the classical theory follows that we should find a broadening of the beam with the maximum intensity on the place of the beam without field. However, from the quantum theory follows that we should find there no intensity at all, and deflected molecules on both sides. The beam should split up in two beams corresponding to the two orientations of the magnet. The experiment decided in favor of the quantum theory.