#physics
148 quotes
“He began to see that the recognition of relativity, interconnectedness, and impermanence as fundamental aspects of physical reality, which had been so difficult for himself and his fellow physicists, was the very basis of the Indian spiritual traditions.”
“There is a fundamental error in separating the parts from the whole , the mistake of atomizing what should not be atomized. Unity and complementarity constitute reality . Heisenberg's praise for Ruth Anshen's book Biography of An Idea found on the back cover”
“Do you believe in a personal God?”
“The problem of values is nothing but the problem of our acts, goals and morals. It concerns the compass by which we must steer our ship if we are to set a true course through life. The compass itself has been given different names by various religions and philosophies: happiness, the will of God, the meaning of life”
“In general, scientific progress calls for no more than the absorption and elaboration of new ideas”
“An expert is someone who knows some of the worst mistakes that can be made in his subject, and how to avoid them. Ein Fachmann ist ein Mann, der einige der gröbsten Fehler kennt, die man in dem betreffenden Fach machen kann, und der sie deshalb zu vermeiden versteht.”
“Kein Chaos, aus dem nicht wieder Ordnung würde”
“Quantum theory provides us with a striking illustration of the fact that we can fully understand a connection though we can only speak of it in images and parables . Die Quantentheorie ist so ein wunderbares Beispiel dafür, daß man einen Sachverhalt in völliger Klarheit verstanden haben kann und gleichzeitig doch weiß, daß man nur in Bildern und Gleichnissen von ihm reden kann.”
“Critique of the Physical Concepts of the Corpuscular Theory”
“Über den anschaulichen Inhalt der quantentheoretischen Kinematik und Mechanik”
“The mind of man is quick to see the errors of others, yet slow to recognize its own.”
“O God, I am a great sinner, but I have never doubted Thy mercy.”
“Now it is clear to me that the new star is not some kind of comet or a fiery meteor, but a star shining in the firmament.”
“I have studied all things celestial, and now I know the heavens as if they were my own backyard.”
“Let me not seem to have lived in vain. Last words, in Dreyer (1890) p. 386.”
“Those who study the stars have God for a teacher. Reported in Bob Perlongo, The Everyday Almanac , 2nd ed. (1995 [1979]) p. 15”
“An astronomer must be cosmopolitan because ignorant statesmen can not be expected to value their services. An Itinery written by Fynes Morrison , &c. (London, 1617) fol., p. 60, quoted in J. L. E. Dreyer, Tycho Brahe (Edinburgh, 1890) p. 261.”
“Epistolarum astronomicarum liber primus (1596) in Tychonis Brahe opera omnia , vol. 6, p. 23, l. 32”
“Simplicibus itaque verbis gaudet Mathematica Veritas, cum etiam per se simplex sit Veritatis oratio. Mathematical Truth therefore rejoices in simple words, since the language of Truth is itself simple.”
“For it is now quite clear to me that there are no solid spheres in the heavens. J. L. E. Dreyer (ed.) Tychonis Brahe opera omnia , vol. 3, p. 111, ll. 17”
“We are just an advanced breed of monkeys on a minor planet of a very average star. But we can understand the Universe. That makes us something very special. Der Spiegel”
“What I have done is to show that it is possible for the way the universe began to be determined by the laws of science. In that case, it would not be necessary to appeal to God to decide how the universe began. This doesn't prove that there is no God, only that God is not necessary. Der Spiegel”
“If I have seen further than other men, it is because I stood on the shoulders of giants.”
“There ought to be something very special about the boundary conditions of the universe and what can be more special than that there is no boundary? As quoted in The Anthropic Cosmological Principle (1986) by John D. Barrow and Frank J. Tipler . p. 444”
“My goal is simple. It is a complete understanding of the universe, why it is as it is and why it exists at all. As quoted in Stephen Hawking's Universe (1985) by John Boslough, Ch. 7 : The Final Question, p. 77”
“Handicapped People and Science”
“The Quantum State of the Universe”
“When I hear the words 'Schrödinger's Cat' I reach for my gun.”
“I regard [the many worlds interpretation ] as self”
“The Large Scale Structure of Space”
“On the Philosophical Problems in Quantizing Macroscopic Objects”
“Precise language is not the problem. Clear language is the problem.”
“New Textbooks for the”
“It doesn't seem to me that this fantastically marvelous universe , this tremendous range of time and space and different kinds of animals, and all the different planets, and all these atoms with all their motions, and so on, all this complicated thing can merely be a stage so that God can watch human beings struggle for good and evil”
“Western civilization, it seems to me, stands by two great heritages. One is the scientific spirit of adventure”
“The theoretical broadening which comes from having many humanities subjects on the campus is offset by the general dopiness of the people who study these things. letter to Robert Bacher (6 April 1950), quoted in Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman (1992) by James Gleick , p. 278”
“interview with Sylvan S. Schweber, 13 November 1984, published in QED and the Men Who Made It: Dyson, Feynman, Schwinger, and Tomonaga (1994) by Silvan S. Schweber, p. 436”
“I had too much stuff. My machines came from too far away. Reflecting on the failure of his presentation at the "Pocono Conference" of 30 March”
“Principles You can't say A is made of B or vice versa. All mass is interaction. note (c. 1948), quoted in Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman (1992) by James Gleick , p. 5”
“We scientists are clever”
“The best weapon of a dictatorship is secrecy, but the best weapon of a democracy should be transparency.”
“We are all agreed that your theory is crazy. The question that divides us is whether it is crazy enough.”
“Your theory is crazy, but it's not crazy enough to be true.”
“Never express yourself more clearly than you are able to think.”
“If quantum mechanics hasn't profoundly shocked you, you haven't understood it yet.”
“Everything we call real is made of things that cannot be regarded as real.”
“How wonderful that we have met with a paradox. Now we have some hope of making progress.”
“Prediction is very difficult, especially about the future.”
“The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement, but the opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth.”
“An expert is a person who has made all the mistakes that can be made in a very narrow field.”
“I am no poet , but if you think for yourselves , as I proceed, the facts will form a poem in your minds . Lecture notes of 1858, quoted in The Life and Letters of Faraday (1870) by Bence Jones, Vol. 2, p. 403”
“I have not been at work except in turning the tables upon table turners”
“Among those points of self”
“If you would cause your view … to be acknowledged by scientific men; you would do a great service to science. If you would even get them to say yes or no to your conclusions it would help to clear the future progress . I believe some hesitate because they do not like their thoughts disturbed. Life and Letters , 2:389.”
“But still try, for who knows what is possible... As quoted in The Life and Letters of Faraday (1870) Vol. II, edited by Henry Bence Jones , p. 483; also engraved above the doorways of the Pfahler Hall of Science at Ursinus College in Collegeville, Pennsylvania (see photo ).”
“On Faraday's Lines of Force”
“Observations on Mental Education”
“I have far more confidence in the one man who works mentally and bodily at a matter than in the six who merely talk about it”
“It is the great beauty of our science , chemistry , that advancement in it, whether in a degree great or small, instead of exhausting the subjects of research, opens the doors to further and more abundant knowledge , overflowing with beauty and utility. Experimental Researches in Electricity , Vol. 2 (1834) p. 257”
“Nothing is too wonderful to be true,”
“Paraphrased variants:”
“Eine neue wissenschaftliche Wahrheit pflegt sich nicht in der Weise durchzusetzen, daß ihre Gegner überzeugt werden und sich als belehrt erklären, sondern vielmehr dadurch, daß ihre Gegner allmählich aussterben und daß die heranwachsende Generation von vornherein mit der Wahrheit vertraut gemacht ist. … Eine neue große wissenschaftliche Idee pflegt sich nicht in der Weise durchzusetzen, daß ihre Gegner allmählich überzeugt und bekehrt werden”
“As a man who has devoted his whole life to the most clearheaded science, to the study of matter, I can tell you as a result of my research about the atoms this much: There is no matter as such! All matter originates and exists only by virtue of a force which brings the particles of an atom to vibration and holds this most minute solar system of the atom together. . . . We must assume behind this force the existence of a conscious and intelligent Mind. This Mind is the matrix of all matter.”
“, here translated as”
“Als Physiker, der sein ganzes Leben der nüchternen Wissenschaft, der Erforschung der Materie widmete, bin ich sicher von dem Verdacht frei, für einen Schwarmgeist gehalten zu werden. Und so sage ich nach meinen Erforschungen des Atoms dieses: Es gibt keine Materie an sich. Alle Materie entsteht und besteht nur durch eine Kraft, welche die Atomteilchen in Schwingung bringt und sie zum winzigsten Sonnensystem des Alls zusammenhält. Da es im ganzen Weltall aber weder eine intelligente Kraft noch eine ewige Kraft gibt”
“New scientific ideas never spring from a communal body, however organized, but rather from the head of an individually inspired researcher who struggles with his problems in lonely thought and unites all his thought on one single point which is his whole world for the moment. Address on the 25th anniversary of the Kaiser”
“Planck, the Quantum, and the Historians”
“I regard consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as derivative from consciousness. We cannot get behind consciousness. Everything that we talk about, everything that we regard as existing, postulates consciousness. The Observer (London, England) (25 January 1931), p. 17”
“We have no right to assume that any physical laws exist, or if they have existed up to now, that they will continue to exist in a similar manner in the future . The Universe in the Light of Modern Physics”
“Farsighted theologians are now working to mine the eternal metal from the teachings of Jesus and to forge it for all time . From Planck to Study (2 December 1913), (Autog. I/383, SPK); as quoted in The Dilemmas of an Upright Man : Max Planck As Spokesman for German Science (1986) by J. L. Heilbron , p. 67”
“Truth is the daughter of time, and I feel no shame in being her midwife. As quoted by Shafique N. Virani, The Ismailis in the Middle Ages: A History of Survival, A search for Salvation (2007) p. 28.”
“Temporis filia veritas; cui me obstetricari non pudet.”
“I used to measure the heavens, now I measure the shadows of Earth. Although my mind was heaven”
“I much prefer the sharpest criticism of a single intelligent man to the thoughtless approval of the masses. As quoted by Gloria Pierre, (K)new Words: Redefine Your Communication (2005) p. 147.”
“There is a force in the earth which causes the moon to move. Essay dedicated to the Archduke Ferdinand , as quoted by Max Caspar, Kepler (1993) Sect. II, Ch. 9, p. 110.”
“In Terra inest virtus, quae Lunam del.”
“We do not ask for what useful purpose the birds do sing, for song is their pleasure since they were created for singing. Similarly, we ought not to ask why the human mind troubles to fathom the secrets of the heavens. The diversity of the phenomena of nature is so great and the treasures hidden in the heavens so rich precisely in order that the human mind shall never be lacking in fresh nourishment. As quoted by Carl Sagan Cosmos”
“Tycho Brahe and Johannes Kepler.”
“Nature uses as little as possible of anything. As quoted by W. H. Auden , Louis Kronenberger , Viking Book of Aphorisms: A Personal Selection (1920) p. 98; also by Joseph Silk, The Infinite Cosmos: Questions from the Frontiers of Cosmology”
“My goal is to show that the heavenly machine is not a kind of divine living being but similar to a clockwork insofar as all the manifold motions are taken care of by one single absolutely simple magnetic bodily force, as in a clockwork all motion is taken care of by a simple weight. And indeed I also show how this physical representation can be presented by calculation and geometrically. Letter to Herwart von Hohenberg (Feb 10, 1605) Johannes Kepler, Gessamelte Werke , 15:146, quoted in Max Caspar, Kepler”
“On Action at a Distance”
“We may find illustrations of the highest doctrines of science in games and gymnastics, in travelling by land and by water, in storms of the air and of the sea, and wherever there is matter in motion. Introductory Lecture on Experimental Physics held at Cambridge in October 1871, re”
“in a few years, all the great physical constants will have been approximately estimated, and … the only occupation which will then be left to the men of science will be to carry these measurement to another place of decimals.”
“I have also a paper afloat, with an electromagnetic theory of light, which, till I am convinced to the contrary, I hold to be great guns. Letter to C. H. Cay, (Jan 5,1865) as quoted in American Journal of Physics , 44(8), page 470, 1976”
“I have also cleared the electromagnetic theory of light from all unwarrantable assumption, so that we may safely determine the velocity of light by measuring the attraction between bodies kept at a given difference of potential, the value of which is known in electromagnetic measure. Letter to C. Hockin, Esq. (Sept 7, 1864) as quoted by Lewis Campbell, William Garnett, The Life of James Clerk Maxwell: With Selections from His Correspondence and Occasional Writings”
“The general equations are next applied to the case of a magnetic disturbance propagated through a non”
“The Man Who Paved the Way for Wireless,”
“The mathematical difficulties of the theory of rotation arise chiefly from the want of geometrical illustrations and sensible images, by which we might fix the results of analysis in our minds. On a Dynamical Top, for exhibiting the phenomena of the motion of a system of invariable form about a fixed point, with some suggestions as to the Earth’s motion , read before the Royal Society of Edinburgh (20 April 1857); published in Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh , Vol. XXI, Part IV (1857).”
“And last of all we have the secondary forms of crystals bursting in upon us, and sparkling in the rigidity of mathematical necessity and telling us, neither of harmony of design, usefulness or moral significance,”
“He that would enjoy life and act with freedom must have the work of the day continually before his eyes. Not yesterday's work, lest he fall into despair; nor to”
“Also partially quoted in Sir Sidney Lee (ed.), The Dictionary of National Biography Vol.40”
“Biographia Britannica: Or the Lives of the Most Eminent Persons who Have Flourished in Great Britain from the Earliest Ages Down to the Present Times, Volume 5”
“The Theology of Isaac Newton’s Principia Mathematica : A Preliminary Survey ,”
“1. Fidelity & Allegiance sworn to the King is only such a fidelity and obedience as is due to him by the law of the land; for were that faith and allegiance more than what the law requires, we would swear ourselves slaves , and the King absolute; whereas, by the law, we are free men, notwithstanding those Oaths. 2. When , therefore, the obligation by the law to fidelity and allegiance ceases, that by the Oath also ceases ... Letter to Dr. Covel Feb. 21, (1688”
“Bullialdus wrote that all force respecting the Sun as its center & depending on matter must be reciprocally in a duplicate ratio of the distance from the center. Letter to Edmund Halley (June 20, 1686) quoted in I. Bernard Cohen and George E. Smith , ed.s, The Cambridge Companion to Newton (2002) p. 204”
“I have not been able to discover the cause of those properties of gravity from phenomena, and I frame no hypotheses; for whatever is not deduced from the phenomena is to be called a hypothesis, and hypotheses, whether metaphysical or physical, whether of occult qualities or mechanical, have no place in experimental philosophy. Letter to Robert Hooke (15 February 1676) [5 February 1676 ( O.S. )]”
“Paraphrases: If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants. If I have seen further it is only by standing on the shoulders of giants.”
“Bernard of Chartres used to say that we [the Moderns] are like dwarves perched on the shoulders of giants [the Ancients], and thus we are able to see more and farther than the latter. And this is not at all because of the acuteness of our sight or the stature of our body, but because we are carried aloft and elevated by the magnitude of the giants.”
“This is a variation on a much older adage, which Roger Bacon attributed to Aristotle : Amicus Plato sed magis amica veritas . Bacon was perhaps paraphrasing a statement in the Nicomachean Ethics : Where both are friends, it is right to prefer truth.”
“These are notes in Latin that Newton wrote to himself that he titled: Quaestiones Quaedam Philosophicae [Certain Philosophical Questions]”
“The intention of the Holy Ghost is to teach us how one goes to heaven, not how heaven goes.”
“I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with senses, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use and by some other means to give us knowledge which we can attain by them.”
“Nature … is inexorable and immutable; she never transgresses the laws imposed upon her, or cares a whit whether her abstruse reasons and methods of operation are understandable to men. For that reason it appears that nothing physical which sense”
“Copernicus never discusses matters of religion or faith , nor does he use argument that depend in any way upon the authority of sacred writings which he might have interpreted erroneously. ... He did not ignore the Bible, but he knew very well that if his doctrine were proved, then it could not contradict the Scriptures when they were rightly understood.”
“To this end they make a shield of their hypocritical zeal for religion. They go about invoking the Bible, which they would have minister to their deceitful purposes. Contrary to the sense of the Bible and the intention of the holy Fathers, if I am not mistaken, they would extend such authorities until even in purely physical matters”
“Persisting in their original resolve to destroy me and everything mine by any means they can think of, these men are aware of my views in astronomy and philosophy. They know that as to the arrangement of the parts of the universe , I hold the sun to be situated motionless in the center of the revolution of the celestial orbs while the earth revolves about the sun. They know also that I support this position not only by refuting the arguments of Ptolemy and Aristotle , but by producing many counter”
“Some years ago, as Your Serene Highness well knows, I discovered in the heavens many things that had not been seen before our own age. The novelty of these things, as well as some consequences which followed from them in contradiction to the physical notions commonly held among academic philosophers, stirred up against me no small number of professors”
“It seems to me that it was well said by Madama Serenissima, and insisted on by your reverence, that the Holy Scripture cannot err, and that the decrees therein contained are absolutely true and inviolable. But I should have in your place added that, though Scripture cannot err, its expounders and interpreters are liable to err in many ways ; and one error in particular would be most grave and most frequent, if we always stopped short at the literal signification of the words.”
“Surely it is a great thing to increase the numerous host of fixed stars previously visible to the unaided vision , adding countless more which have never before been seen, exposing these plainly to the eye in numbers ten times exceeding the old and familiar stars. Translation by Stillman Drake in Discoveries and Opinions of Galileo”
“Translation by Albert Van Helden in Sidereus Nuncius (Chicago, 1989), 62”
“If one has left this entire system to itself for an hour, one would say that the cat still lives if meanwhile no atom has decayed. The psi”
“Although I think that life may be the result of an accident, I do not think that of consciousness . Consciousness cannot be accounted for in physical terms. For consciousness is absolutely fundamental. It cannot be accounted for in terms of anything else. As quoted in The Observer (11 January 1931); also in Psychic Research (1931), Vol. 25, p. 91”
“Schrödinger equation”
“For thousands of years men have striven and suffered and begotten and women have brought forth in pain . A hundred years ago, perhaps, another man sat on this spot; like you he gazed with awe and yearning in his heart at the dying light on the glaciers. Like you he was begotten of man and born of woman. He felt pain and brief joy as you do. Was he someone else? Was it not you yourself? What is this Self of yours? What was the necessary condition for making the thing conceived this time into you, just you and not someone else? "Seek for the Road"”
“The stages of human development are to strive for: (1) Besitz [Possession] (2) Wissen [Knowledge] (3) Können [Ability] (4) Sein [Being] Writings of August 1918, quoted in A Life of Erwin Schrödinger (1994) by Walter Moore”
“No self is of itself alone . It has a long chain of intellectual ancestors. The "I" is chained to ancestry by many factors … This is not mere allegory, but an eternal memory . Writings of July 1918, quoted in A Life of Erwin Schrödinger (1994) by Walter Moore”
“Nirvana is a state of pure blissful knowledge ... It has nothing to do with the individual . The ego or its separation is an illusion . Indeed in a certain sense two "I"'s are identical namely when one disregards all special contents”
“'If finally we look back at that idea of [Ernst] Mach [1838”
“But it is quite easy to express the solution in words, thus: the plurality that we perceive is only an appearance; it is not real. Vedantic philosophy, in which this is a fundamental dogma, has sought to clarify it by a number of analogies, one of the most attractive being the many”
“This life of yours which you are living is not merely apiece of this entire existence, but in a certain sense the whole; only this whole is not so constituted that it can be surveyed in one single glance. This, as we know, is what the Brahmins express in that sacred, mystic formula which is yet really so simple and so clear; tat tvam asi , this is you. Or, again, in such words as "I am in the east and the west, I am above and below, I am this entire world. in Moore, Walter J., Schrödinger: Life and Thought Cambridge University Press (1992). pp.170”
“As astronomer Carl Sagan thought about what Fermi said [ Fermi paradox ], he began to be alarmed. ...This could only mean that advanced civilizations destroy themselves before they get that far, a viewpoint Sagan published in 1966. Stanley A. Rice, Life of Earth : Portrait of a Beautiful, Middle”
“The pursuit of science.”
“He was simply unable to let things be foggy. Since they always are, this kept him pretty active. Robert Oppenheimer”
“Some recent work by E. Fermi and L. Szilard , which has been communicated to me in manuscript, leads me to expect that the element uranium may be turned into a new and important source of energy in the immediate future. Certain aspects of the situation seem to call for watchfulness and, if necessary, quick action on the part of the Administration... Albert Einstein , in the famous letter to President Franklin D. Roosevelt which prompted attention to what eventually became the Manhattan Project . (1939”
“There are two possible outcomes: if the result confirms the hypothesis , then you've made a measurement . If the result is contrary to the hypothesis, then you've made a discovery. As quoted in Nuclear Principles in Engineering (2005) by Tatjana Jevremovic, p. 397”
“If I could remember the names of all these particles, I'd be a botanist. As quoted in Hyperspace (1995) by Michio Kaku”
“I hope it won't take long. Comment to Eugene Wigner , ten days before his death from cancer, as quoted in The collected works of Eugene Paul Wigner (1992), p. 108”
“I cannot think of a single one, not even intelligence. When asked what characteristics Nobel prize winning physicists had in common. As quoted in Physics Today (October 1994), p. 70.”
“Where are They? Maybe we are alone in the galaxy after all”
“Although the problem of transmuting chemical elements into each other is much older than a satisfactory definition of the very concept of chemical element, it is well known that the first and most important step towards its solution was made only nineteen years ago by the late Lord Rutherford, who started the method of the nuclear bombardments. Nobel lecture”
“Reportedly his last words, said to a Roman soldier who, despite being given orders not to, killed Archimedes during the conquest of Syracuse; as quoted in World Literature: An Anthology of Human Experience (1947) by Arthur Christy, p. 655.”
“noli … istum disturbare”
“Noli turbare circulos meos . or Noli tangere circulos meos. Do not disturb my circles !”
“Give me a firm spot on which to stand, and I shall move the earth.”
“Give me a fulcrum, and I shall move the world.”
“Give me a lever and a place to stand and I will move the earth.”
“Give me a place to stand and with a lever I will move the whole world. This variant derives from an earlier source than Pappus: The Library of History of Diodorus Siculus , Fragments of Book XXVI , as translated by F. R. Walton, in Loeb Classical Library (1957) Vol. XI. In Doric Greek this may have originally been Πᾷ βῶ, καὶ χαριστίωνι τὰν γᾶν κινήσω πᾶσαν [ Pā bō, kai kharistiōni tan gān kinēsō [variant kinasō ] pāsan ].”
“Give me a place to stand, and I shall move the world”
“What he exclaimed as he ran naked from his bath, realizing that by measuring the displacement of water an object produced, compared to its weight, he could measure its density (and thus determine the proportion of gold that was used in making a king's crown); as quoted by Vitruvius Pollio in De Architectura , ix.215;”
“Does the inertia of a body depend upon its energy content?”
“It followed from the special theory of relativity that mass and energy are both but different manifestations of the same thing”
“If a body gives off the energy L in the form of radiation, its mass diminishes by L/c².”
“Opening of a letter to his friend Conrad Habicht in which he describes his four revolutionary Annus Mirabilis papers (18 or 25 May 1905) Doc. 27”
“Letter to Jost Winteler (July 8th, 1901), quoted in The Private Lives of Albert Einstein by Roger Highfields and Paul Carter (1993), p. 79 . Einstein had been annoyed that Paul Drude , editor of Annalen der Physik , had dismissed some criticisms Einstein made of Drude's electron theory of metals.”
“Autoritätsdusel ist der größte Feind der Wahrheit. Blind obedience to authority is the greatest enemy of truth.”
“Mes Projets d'Avenir”
“A happy man is too satisfied with the present to dwell too much on the future.”
“❝Everything should be made simple as possible but no simpler.❞ Repeated throughout his life, see: Quote Investigator”