Physics Quotes

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The chain of cause and effect could be quantitatively verified only if the whole universe were considered as a single system — but then physics has vanished, and only a mathematical scheme remains. The partition of the world into observing and observed system prevents a sharp formulation of the law of cause and effect.

Werner Heisenberg

However the development proceeds in detail, the path so far traced by the quantum theory indicates that an understanding of those still unclarified features of atomic physics can only be acquired by foregoing visualization and objectification to an extent greater than that customary hitherto. We have probably no reason to regret this, because the thought of the great epistemological difficulties with which the visual atom concept of earlier physics had to contend gives us the hope that the abstracter atomic physics developing at present will one day fit more harmoniously into the great edifice of Science.

Werner Heisenberg

Relativity physics has shifted the moving present out from the superstructure of the universe, into the minds of human beings, where it belongs.

Without renouncing the support of physics, it is possible for the physiology of the senses, not only to pursue its own course of development, but also to afford to physical science itself powerful assistance.

Physics is a science which must be proved with honest effort. One can, perhaps, present a subject in such a manner that an audience of laymen may be convinced erroneously that it has understood the lecture. This, however, means a furthering a superficial knowledge, which is worse and more dangerous than none at all.

Wilhelm Röntgen

Physics defines itself as the science devoted to discovering, developing and refining those aspects of reality that are amenable to mathematical analysis.

Neutrino physics is largely an art of learning a great deal by observing nothing.

It obeyed no known laws of physics, and overthrew the hoary axiom that like things performed to like things produce like results.

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

All physicists agree that the problem of physics consists in tracing the phenomena of nature back to the simple laws of mechanics.

If one knows physics for a distance only, if he hears merely strange names and mathematical formulae in it, he will, indeed, come to believe that it is an affair of the learned alone — ingeniously and wisely constructed, but without significance for men of other interests and problems.

Hans Reichenbach

Einstein, in thus analyzing what is involved in making a judgment of simultaneity, and in seizing on the act of the observer as the essence of the situation, is actually adopting a new point of view as to what the concepts of physics should be, namely, the operational view.

Percy Williams Bridgman

I never studied science or physics at school, and yet when I read complex books on quantum physics I understood them perfectly because I wanted to understand them. The study of quantum physics helped me to have a deeper understanding of the Secret, on an energetic level,

We live in the hope and the faith that, by the advance of molecular physics, we shall by and by be able to see our way as clearly from the constituents of water to the properties of water, as we are now able to deduce the operations of a watch from the form of its parts and the manner in which they are put together.

Thomas Henry Huxley

One feels that one has, at last in gravitational collapse, a phenomenon where general relativity dramatically comes into its own, and where its fiery marriage with quantum physics will be consummated.

John Archibald Wheeler

If doing mathematics or science is looked upon as a game, then one might say that in mathematics you compete against yourself or other mathematicians; in physics your adversary is nature and the stakes are higher.

If physics and biology one day meet, and one of the two is swallowed up, that one will not be biology.

J. B. S. Haldane

In physics experience can best be sought from mathematics and mechanics, chemistry, and anatomy; in medical practice experience derives most abundantly from the observations of diseases, and from more accurate histories and cures.

Friedrich Hoffmann

My starting point was rather the stability of matter, a pure miracle when considered from the standpoint of classical physics. By "stability" I mean that the same substances always have the same properties.

The electron has conquered Physics, and many worship the new idol rather blindly.

Lucien Poincaré

The fundamental laws of physics do not describe true facts about reality. Rendered as descriptions of facts, they are false; amended to be true, they lose their explanatory force.

Nancy Cartwright

Statistics reigns and revels in the very heart of Physics.

Francis Ysidro Edgeworth

The chief law of physics, the pinnacle of the whole system is, in my opinion, the principle of least action.

It was a wonderful mess at that time. Wonderful! Just great! It was so confusing — physics at its best, when everything is confused and you know something important lies just around the corner.

I suppose my mind had been ruined for philosophy by studying too much physics, with its simple (some would say naive) pragmatism.