Physicist Quotes - Page 8

• Said to physicist John Bahcall. I don't believe in natural science.

  Kurt Gödel

  Believe, Belief, Natural

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• Does the engineer ever predict the acceleration of a given body from a knowledge of its mass and of the forces acting upon it? Of course. Does the chemist ever measure the mass of an atom by measuring its acceleration in a given field of force? Yes. Does the physicist ever determine the strength of a field by measuring the acceleration of a known mass in that field? Certainly. Why then, should any one of these roles be singled out as the role of Newton's second law of motion? The fact is that it has a variety of roles.

  Brian Ellis

  Law, Acting, Body

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• As commonly understood, creationism involves belief in an earth formed only about ten thousand years ago, an interpretation of the Bible that is still very popular. For the record, I have no reason to doubt that the universe is the billions of years old that physicists say it is. Further, I find the idea of common descent (that all organisms share a common ancestor) fairly convincing, and have no particular reason to doubt it.

  Michael Behe

  Years, Ideas, Doubt

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• ...The entire preoccupation of the physicist is with things that contain within themselves a principle of movement and rest.

  Aristotle

  Words Of Wisdom, Principles, Movement

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• I wanted to become a mathematician, physicist or astronomer.

  Philip Emeagwali

  Astronomers, Mathematician, Wanted

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• It startled him even more when just after he was awarded the Galactic Institute's Prize for Extreme Cleverness he got lynched by a rampaging mob of respectable physicists who had finally realized that the one thing they really couldn't stand was a smart-ass.

  Douglas Adams

  Smart, Science, Lynching

  Douglas Adams (2009). “The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy”, p.57, Pan Macmillan

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• While their methods differ radically, artists and physicists share the desire to investigate the ways the interlocking pieces of reality fit together. This is the common ground upon which they meet.

  Leonard Shlain

  Artist, Reality, Desire

  Leonard Shlain (1991). “Art and Physics: Parallel Visions in Space, Time, and Light”, William Morrow & Company

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• The total disorder in the universe, as measured by the quantity that physicists call entropy, increases steadily over time. Also, the total order in the universe, as measured by the complexity and permanence of organized structures, also increases steadily over time.

  Freeman Dyson

  Order, Structure, Increase

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• When the time comes to change a paradigm--to renounce one bedrock truth and adopt another--the artist and physicist are most likely to be in the forefront.

  Leonard Shlain

  Artist, Renounce, Paradigm

  Leonard Shlain (1991). “Art and Physics: Parallel Visions in Space, Time, and Light”, William Morrow & Company

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• In the good old days physicists repeated each other's experiments, just to be sure. Today they stick to FORTRAN, so that they can share each other's programs, bugs included.

  Edsger Dijkstra

  Today, Bugs, Sticks

  Edsger W. Dijkstra (2012). “Selected Writings on Computing: A personal Perspective”, p.130, Springer Science & Business Media

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• Mankind has moved away from the heart of the world to the logic of the mind, and their belief is in the chemist, the physicist, and the mathematician. Science has proven to them that all this ancient belief in ceremony is simply ignorance.

  Drunvalo Melchizedek

  Heart, Ignorance, Mind

  Drunvalo Melchizedek (2010). “Serpent of Light: The Movement of the Earth's Kundalini and the Rise of the Female Light, 1949 to 2013”, p.7, ReadHowYouWant.com

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• When people on airplanes ask me what I do, I used to say I was a physicist, which ended the discussion. I once said I was a cosmologist, but they started asking me about makeup, and the title 'astronomer' gets confused with astrologer. Now I say I make maps.

  Margaret Geller

  Confused, Airplane, Makeup

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• Physics is an otherworld thing, it requires a taste for things unseen, even unheard of- a high degree of abstraction... These faculties die off somehow when you grow up... profound curiosity happens when children are young. I think physicists are the Peter Pans of the human race... Once you are sophisticated, you know too much- far too much. Pauli once said to me, "I know a great deal. I know too much. I am a quantum ancient.".

  Isidor Isaac Rabi

  Growing Up, Children, Thinking

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• It is a melancholy experience for a professional mathematician to find himself writing about mathematics. The function of a mathematician is to do something, to prove new theorems, to add to mathematics, and not to talk about what he or other mathematicians have done. Statesmen despise publicists, painters despise art-critics, and physiologists, physicists, or mathematicians have usually similar feelings: there is no scorn more profound, or on the whole more justifiable, than that of the men who make for the men who explain. Exposition, criticism, appreciation, is work for second-rate minds.

  G. H. Hardy

  Appreciation, Art, Writing

  G. H. Hardy (2012). “A Mathematician's Apology”, p.61, Cambridge University Press

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• For almost half a century, Fermilab has occupied center stage as physicists have sought to understand the fundamental structure of the universe. The lab deserves a good history, and I'm happy to say that in this book it has one. The authors present a compelling, nuanced, and richly detailed account of the place from its beginnings to the present.

  James Trefil

  Book, Fundamentals, Half

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• Like no other science, astrophysics cross-pollinate s the expertise of chemists, biologists, geologists and physicists, all to discover the past, present, and future of the cosmos-and our humble place within it.

  Neil deGrasse Tyson

  Humble, Science, Past

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• University President: Why is it that you physicists always require so much expensive equipment? Now the Department of Mathematics requires nothing but money for paper, pencils, and erasers . . . and the Department of Philosophy is better still. It doesn't even ask for erasers.

  Isaac Asimov

  Money, Philosophy, President

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• Ordinary language is totally unsuited for expressing what physics really asserts, since the words of everyday life are not sufficiently abstract. Only mathematics and mathematical logic can say as little as the physicist means to say.

  Bertrand Russell

  Life, Mean, Math

  Bertrand Russell (1992). “The Basic Writings of Bertrand Russell, 1903-1959”, p.626, Psychology Press

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• Many questions remain in the UFO controversy. Scientists ask how interstellar pilots could survive a trip of hundreds of years while cutting-edge physicists offer speculation of deep space wormholes and the use of zero point energy. For now, we could not do any better than to study MAJIC EYES ONLY and read the accounts of UFO crash retrievals and ponder what a reality that includes diverse intelligent life outside of our planet might mean for us and future generations.

  Jim Marrs

  Zero, Mean, Eye

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• A mathematician is an individual who calls himself a 'physicist' and does 'physics' and physical experiments with abstract concepts.

  Bill Gaede

  Doe, Physics, Individual

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• Ancient wisdom and quantum physicists make unlikely bedfellows: In quantum mechanics the observer determines (or even brings into being) what is observed, and so, too, for the Tiwis, who dissolve the distinction between themselves and the cosmos. In quantum physics, subatomic particles influence each other from a distance, and this tallies with the aboriginal view, in which people, animals, rocks, and trees all weave together in the same interwoven fabric.

  Huston Smith

  Distance, Animal, Rocks

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• Theoretical physicists accept the need for mathematical beauty as an act of faith... For example, the main reason why the theory of relativity is so universally accepted is its mathematical beauty.

  Paul Dirac

  Science, Example, Needs

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• To a physicist, we have the 'I' word, the I-word is 'impossible.' That's dangerous.

  Michio Kaku

  Impossible, Dangerous

  Interview with Deepak Chopra, www.huffingtonpost.com. June 16, 2010.

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• I'm a physicist, and we have something called Moore's Law, which says computer power doubles every 18 months. So every Christmas, we more or less assume that our toys and appliances are more or less twice as powerful as the previous Christmas.

  Michio Kaku

  Christmas, Powerful, Law

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• I vowed to myself that when I grew up and became a theoretical physicist, in addition to doing research, I would write books that I would have liked to have read as a child. So whenever I write, I imagine myself, as a youth, reading my books, being thrilled by the incredible advances being made in physics and science.

  Michio Kaku

  Children, Reading, Book

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