Laws Of Physics Quotes

• We could call order by the name of God, but it would be an impersonal God. There's not much personal about the laws of physics.

  Stephen Hawking

  Atheist, Order, Law

  "Leaping the Abyss". Interview with Gregory Benford, reason.com. April 2002.

  16 Copy quote

  Show source

• The distinction between the past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.

  Albert Einstein

  Love, Life, God

  113 Copy quote

• American laws don't work, but at least the laws of physics might work.

  Gore Vidal

  Law, Might, Physics

  "Gore Vidal on the Media and the American People". Interview with David Barsamian, www.sharedhost.progressive.org. August 1, 2012.

  3 Copy quote

  Show source

• Other than the laws of physics, rules have never really worked out for me.

  Craig Ferguson

  Law, Physics

  9 Copy quote

• There is nothing that living things do that cannot be understood from the point of view that they are made of atoms acting according to the laws of physics.

  Richard P. Feynman

  Science, Views, Law

  Richard P. Feynman, Robert B. Leighton, Matthew Sands (2013). “The Feynman Lectures on Physics, vol. 1 for tablets”, Basic Books

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Unless the structure of the nucleus has a surprise in store for us, the conclusion seems plain — there is nothing in the whole system of laws of physics that cannot be deduced unambiguously from epistemological considerations.

  Arthur Eddington

  Knowledge, Science, Law

  "Relativity theory of protons and electrons".

  17 Copy quote

  Show source

• Anyone who believes that the laws of physics are mere social conventions is invited to try transgressing those conventions from the windows of my apartment. (I live on the twenty-first floor).

  Alan Sokal

  Believe, Science, Law

  Alan D. Sokal (2008). “Beyond the hoax: science, philosophy and culture”, Oxford University Press, USA

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain, and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality.

  Albert Einstein

  Inspirational, Funny, Wisdom

  Address to Prussian Academy of Sciences, Berlin, 27 Jan. 1921

  79 Copy quote

  Show source

• Acceleration is finite, I think, according to some laws of physics.

  Terry Riley

  Thinking, Law, Physics

  28 Copy quote

• If someone points out to you that your pet theory of the universe is in disagreement with Maxwell's equations - then so much the worse for Maxwell's equations. If it is found to be contradicted by observation - well, these experimentalists do bungle things sometimes. But if your theory is found to be against the second law of thermodynamics I can give you no hope; there is nothing for it but to collapse in deepest humiliation.

  Arthur Eddington

  Hope, Science, Errors

  "The Nature of the Physical World" by Arthur Eddington, (Ch. 4), 1928.

  28 Copy quote

  Show source

• When the province of physical theory was extended to encompass microscopic phenomena through the creation of quantum mechanics, the concept of consciousness came to the fore again. It was not possible to formulate the laws of quantum mechanics in a fully consistent way without reference to the consciousness.

  Eugene Wigner

  Law, Way, Consciousness

  Eugene Paul Wigner (2013). “The Collected Works of Eugene Paul Wigner: Historical, Philosophical, and Socio-Political Papers. Historical and Biographical Reflections and Syntheses”, p.28, Springer Science & Business Media

  36 Copy quote

  Show source

• The remarkable feature of physical laws is that they apply everywhere, whether or not you choose to believe in them. After the laws of physics, everything else is opinion.

  Neil deGrasse Tyson

  Believe, Law, Opinion

  6 Copy quote

• What one man calls God, another calls the laws of physics.

  Nikola Tesla

  Men, Law, Physics

  127 Copy quote

• All science is either physics or stamp collecting.

  Ernest Rutherford

  Witty, Humorous, Science

  Quoted in J. B. Birks, Rutherford at Manchester (1962)

  57 Copy quote

  Show source

• The miracle of the appropriateness of the language of mathematics for the formulation of the laws of physics is a wonderful gift which we neither understand nor deserve.

  Eugene Wigner

  Science, Law, Miracle

  Eugene Paul Wigner (2012). “Philosophical Reflections and Syntheses”, p.549, Springer Science & Business Media

  65 Copy quote

  Show source

• It should be possible to explain the laws of physics to a barmaid.

  Albert Einstein

  Love, Inspirational, Life

  77 Copy quote

• Nothing is accidental in the universe - this is one of my Laws of Physics - except the entire universe itself, which is Pure Accident, pure divinity.

  Joyce Carol Oates

  Science, Law, Divinity

  1970 Do WhatYou Will,'The Summing-Up: Meredith Dawe'.

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• The only watchmaker is the blind forces of physics.

  Richard Dawkins

  Physics, Blind, Force

  13 Copy quote

• The physicist is like someone who's watching people playing chess and, after watching a few games, he may have worked out what the moves in the game are. But understanding the rules is just a trivial preliminary on the long route from being a novice to being a grand master. So even if we understand all the laws of physics, then exploring their consequences in the everyday world where complex structures can exist is a far more daunting task, and that's an inexhaustible one I'm sure.

  Martin Rees

  Moving, Science, Law

  10 Copy quote

• It was not possible to formulate the laws of quantum mechanics in a fully consistent way without reference to the consciousness.

  Eugene Wigner

  Law, Way, Consciousness

  Eugene Paul Wigner (2012). “Philosophical Reflections and Syntheses”, p.248, Springer Science & Business Media

  40 Copy quote

  Show source

• We could present spatially an atomic fact which contradicted the laws of physics, but not one which contradicted the laws of geometry.

  Ludwig Wittgenstein

  Math, Law, Facts

  Ludwig Wittgenstein (2014). “The Tractatus According to Its Own Form”, p.38, Lulu.com

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• Could Hamlet have been written by a committee, or the "Mona Lisa" painted by a club? Could the New Testament have been composed as a conference report? Creative ideas do not spring from groups. They spring from individuals. The divine spark leaps from the finger of God to the finger of Adam, whether it takes ultimate shape in a law of physics or a law of the land, a poem or a policy, a sonata or a mechanical computer.

  Alfred Whitney Griswold

  God, Spring, Creativity

  1957 Baccalaureate address, 9 Jun.

  24 Copy quote

  Show source

• The burgeoning field of computer science has shifted our view of the physical world from that of a collection of interacting material particles to one of a seething network of information. In this way of looking at nature, the laws of physics are a form of software, or algorithm, while the material world-the hardware-plays the role of a gigantic computer.

  Paul Davies

  Nature, Science, Views

  20 Copy quote

• From all we have learnt about the structure of living matter, we must be prepared to find it working in a manner that cannot be reduced to the ordinary laws of physics. And that not on the ground that there is any 'new force' or what not, directing the behaviour of the single atoms within a living organism, but because the construction is different from anything we have yet tested in the physical laboratory.

  Erwin Schrodinger

  Life, Science, Law

  "What is Life?: With Mind and Matter and Autobiographical Sketches".

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• When I began my career as a cosmologist some twenty years ago, I was a convinced atheist. I never in my wildest dreams imagined that one day I would be writing a book purporting to show that the central claims of Judeo-Christian theology are in fact true, that these claims are straightforward deductions of the laws of physics as we now understand them. I have been forced into these conclusions by the inexorable logic of my own special branch of physics.

  Frank J. Tipler

  Christian, Dream, Atheist

  83 Copy quote