Steven Weinberg Quotes - Page 3

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• Though aware that there is nothing in the universe that suggests any purpose for humanity, one way that we can find a purpose is to study the universe by the methods of science, without consoling ourselves with fairy tales about its future, or about our own.

  Steven Weinberg

  Humanity, Atheism, Way

  Steven Weinberg (2012). “Lake Views”, p.45, Harvard University Press

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• We have simply arrived too late in the history of the universe to see this primordial simplicity easily... But although the symmetries are hidden from us, we can sense that they are latent in nature, governing everything about us. That's the most exciting idea I know: that nature is much simpler than it looks. Nothing makes me more hopeful that our generation of human beings may actually hold the key to the universe in our hands - that perhaps in our lifetimes we may be able to tell why all of what we see in this immense universe of galaxies and particles is logically inevitable.

  Steven Weinberg

  Nature, Science, Keys

  "The Key to the Universe: A Report on the New Physics". Book by Nigel Calder, 1977.

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• If there is no solace in the fruits of our research, there is at least some consolation in the research itself. Men and women are not content to comfort themselves with tales of gods and giants, or to confine their thoughts to the daily affairs of life; they also build telescopes and satellites and accelerators and sit at their desks for endless hours working out the meaning of the data they gather.

  Steven Weinberg

  Hard Work, Science, Men

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• Nothing in physics seems so hopeful to as the idea that it is possible for a theory to have a high degree of symmetry was hidden from us in everyday life. The physicist's task is to find this deeper symmetry.

  Steven Weinberg

  Science, Ideas, Hopeful

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• On balance the moral influence of religion has been awful.

  Steven Weinberg

  Religion, Balance, Atheism

  Steven Weinberg (2012). “Facing Up”, p.241, Harvard University Press

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• The fact that Newton and Michael Faraday and other scientists of the past were deeply religious shows that religious skepticism is not a prejudice that governed science from the beginning, but a lesson that has been learned through centuries of experience in the study of nature.

  Steven Weinberg

  Religious, Past, Prejudice

  Steven Weinberg (2001). “Facing Up”, p.26, Harvard University Press

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• Journalists generally have no bias toward one cosmological theory or another, but many have a natural preference for excitement.

  Steven Weinberg

  Evolution, Excitement, Natural

  Steven Weinberg (2012). “Facing Up”, p.175, Harvard University Press

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• Elementary particles are terribly boring, which is one reason why we're so interested in them.

  Steven Weinberg

  Reason Why, Boring, Reason

  Richard Phillips Feynman, Steven Weinberg (1999). “Elementary Particles and the Laws of Physics: The 1986 Dirac Memorial Lectures”, p.79, Cambridge University Press

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• This doesn't mean that they commit themselves to the view that this is all there is. Many scientists (including me) think that this is the case, but other scientists are religious, and believe that what is observed in nature is at least in part a result of God's will.

  Steven Weinberg

  Religious, Believe, Mean

  "Philosophers Notwithstanding, Kansas School Board Redefines Science" by Dennis Overbye, www.nytimes.com. November 15, 2005.

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• How strange it would be if the final theory were to be discovered in our lifetimes! The discovery of the final laws of nature will mark a discontinuity in human intellectual history, the sharpest that has occurred since the beginning of modern science in the seventeenth century. Can we now imagine what that would be like?

  Steven Weinberg

  Science, Discovery, Law

  Steven Weinberg (1992). “Dreams of a Final Theory”, Pantheon

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• It seems that scientists are often attracted to beautiful theories in the way that insects are attracted to flowers — not by logical deduction, but by something like a sense of smell.

  Steven Weinberg

  Beautiful, Flower, Smell

  Physics Today, November 2005.

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• There is now a feeling that the pieces of physics are falling into place, not because of any single revolutionary idea or because of the efforts of any one physicist, but because of a flowering of many seeds of theory, most of them planted long ago.

  Steven Weinberg

  Fall, Science, Long Ago

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• I'm offended by the kind of smarmy religiosity that's all around us, perhaps more in America than in Europe, and not really that harmful because it's not really that intense or even that serious, but just... you know after a while you get tired of hearing clergymen giving the invocation at various public celebrations and you feel, haven't we outgrown all this? Do we have to listen to this?

  Steven Weinberg

  Tired, Europe, America

  "The Atheism Tapes". Documentary, 2004.

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• This is often the way it is in physics - our mistake is not that we take our theories too seriously, but that we do not take them seriously enough. It is always hard to realize that these numbers and equations we play with at our desks have something to do with the real world. Even worse, there often seems to be a general agreement that certain phenomena are just not fit subjects for respectable theoretical and experimental effort.

  Steven Weinberg

  Real, Mistake, Agreement

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• It seems a bit unfair to my relatives to be murdered in order to provide an opportunity for free will for Germans, but even putting that aside, how does free will account for cancer? Is it an opportunity of free will for tumors?

  Steven Weinberg

  Cancer, Opportunity, Order

  Steven Weinberg (2001). “Facing Up”, p.240, Harvard University Press

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• If language is to be of any use to us, then we ought to try and preserve the meaning of words, and 'god' historically has not meant the laws of nature.

  Steven Weinberg

  Law, Religion, Atheism

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• Quantum field theory, which was born just fifty years ago from the marriage of quantum mechanics with relativity, is a beautiful but not very robust child.

  Steven Weinberg

  Marriage, Beauty, Beautiful

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• The more comprehensible the universe becomes the more pointless it seems.

  Steven Weinberg

  Seems, Universe, Pointless

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• You know, our fundamentalist friends dislike the teaching of evolution in schools because of the effect they feel it has on our view of our own special importance, while liberals insist that scientific and spiritual matters can be kept in separate compartments. On this point, I tend to agree with the fundamentalists, though I come to opposite conclusions about teaching evolution because I am convinced it's true.

  Steven Weinberg

  Spiritual, Teaching, School

  Steven Weinberg (2012). “Facing Up”, p.5, Harvard University Press

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• They felt that science would be corrosive to religious belief and they were worried about it. Damn it, I think they were right. It is corrosive to religious belief and it's a good thing.

  Steven Weinberg

  Religious, Atheist, Thinking

  "Atheism: A Rough History of Disbelief" (BBC Four), 2005.

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• It appears that anything you say about the way that theory and experiment may interact is likely to be correct, and anything you say about the way that theory and experiment must interact is likely to be wrong.

  Steven Weinberg

  Science, May, Way

  Steven Weinberg (1992). “Dreams of a Final Theory”, Pantheon

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• Even in the dark times between experimental breakthroughs, there always continues a steady evolution of theoretical ideas, leading almost imperceptibly to changes in previous beliefs.

  Steven Weinberg

  Change, Dark, Science

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• [Science] is corrosive of religious belief, and it's a good thing too.

  Steven Weinberg

  Religious, Atheist, Religion

  "The Atheism Tapes", 2004.

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• I think one of the great historical contributions of science is to weaken the hold of religion. That's a good thing.

  Steven Weinberg

  Thinking, Historical, Religion

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• Premature as the question may be, it is hardly possible not to wonder whether we will find any answer to our deepest questions, any signs of the workings of an interested God, in a final theory. I think that we will not.

  Steven Weinberg

  Thinking, Atheism, Finals

  Steven Weinberg (2010). “Dreams Of A Final Theory: The Search for The Fundamental Laws of Nature”, p.76, Random House

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