Physicist Quotes - Page 17

• ... chemistry is a trade for people without enough imagination to be physicists.

  Arthur C. Clarke

  People, Imagination, Chemistry

  8 Copy quote

• The medieval doctors of divinity who did not pretend to settle how many angels could dance on the point of a needle cut a very poor figure as far as romantic credulity is concerned beside the modern physicists who have settled to the billionth of a millimetre every movement and position in the dance of the electrons. Not for worlds would I question the precise accuracy of these calculations or the existence of electrons (whatever they may be). The fate of Joan is a warning to me against such heresy.

  George Bernard Shaw

  Angel, Fate, Cutting

  George Bernard Shaw (1993). “The Complete Prefaces: 1914-1929”, Viking Adult

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The ancient intuition that all matter, all "reality," is energy, that all phenomena, including time and space, are mere crystallizations of mind, is an idea with which few physicists have quarreled since the theory of relativity first called into question the separate identities of energy and matter. Today most scientists would agree with the ancient Hindus that nothing exists or is destroyed, things merely change shape or form; that matter is insubstantial in origin, a temporary aggregate of he pervasive energy that animates the electron.

  Peter Matthiessen

  Reality, Ideas, Space

  Peter Matthiessen (1998). “Nine-Headed Dragon River: Zen Journals 1969-1982”, p.69, Shambhala Publications

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The physicists say that I am a mathematician, and the mathematicians say that I am a physicist. I am a completely isolated man and though everybody knows me, there are very few people who really know me.

  Albert Einstein

  Science, Technology, Men

  "From Companion's Lost Diary, A Portrait of Einstein in Old Age" by Dennis Overbye, www.nytimes.com. April 24, 2004.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• ...the physicist cannot simply surrender to the philosopher the critical contemplation of the theoretical foundations; for, he himself knows best, and feels more surely where the shoe pinches...Physical conceptions are free creations of the human mind, and are not, however it may seem, uniquely determined by the external world.

  Albert Einstein

  Science, Shoes, Mind

  7 Copy quote

• Being a physicist, not a philosopher, I have devised an entirely new theory of consciousness, allowing one to numerically calculate the level of consciounsess of humans and even animals.

  Michio Kaku

  Animal, Levels, Philosopher

  Reddit AMA, www.reddit.com. March 7, 2014.

  12 Copy quote

  Show source

• Some PhD physicists write software or work for hedge funds, but physics still has a problem with having very smart people but not enough opportunities.

  Stuart J. Russell

  Smart, Writing, Opportunity

  "Intelligent robots don't need to be conscious to turn against us". Interview with Guia Marie Del Prado, uk.businessinsider.com. August 5, 2015.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The medieval theologian who gazed at the night sky through the eyes of Aristotle and saw angels moving the spheres in harmony has become the modern cosmologist who gazes at the same sky through the eyes of Einstein and sees the hand of God not in angels but in the constants of nature. When confronted with the order and beauty of the universe and the strange coincidences of nature, it¹s very tempting to take the leap of faith from science into religion. I am sure many physicists want to. I only wish they would admit it.

  Tony Rothman

  Moving, Eye, Angel

  8 Copy quote

• I knew of a physicist at the University of Chicago who was rather crazy like some scientists, and the idea of the insolidity, the instability of the physical world impressed him so much that he used to go around in enormous padded slippers for fear he should fall through the floor.

  Alan Watts

  Crazy, Fall, Ideas

  4 Copy quote

• Every physicist knows that things connect with each other. To isolate things is not the way the universe works - winning best actor is arbitrary.

  Alan Arkin

  Winning, Arbitrary, Actors

  "OSCARS Q&A: Alan Arkin". Interview with Pete Hammond, deadline.com. February 9, 2013.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Mathematicians also make terrible salesmen. Physicists can discover the same thing as a mathematician and say 'We've discovered a great new law of nature. Give us a billion dollars.' And if it doesn't change the world, then they say, 'There's an even deeper thing. Give us another billion dollars.'

  Gian-Carlo Rota

  Law, Giving, Dollars

  4 Copy quote

• I studied engineering at MIT. There, the late, great physicist Philip Morrison introduced me to the idea that, in any system, there exists the inevitability that an event will occur which is completely unrelated to anything that preceded it. It completely changed my perception of "impossible."

  Tohoru Masamune

  Engineering, Ideas, Perception

  "Tohoru Masamune: Pursuing Dreams and Embracing Chaos". Interview with Maranda Pleasant, www.marandapleasantmedia.com.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• But even technical work filled with formulas can be valuable and important. Einstein offered a lot of technical work on quantum physics, which mostly eludes me. I refer to his work, and I have studied it, but I am not a physicist. But look at Einstein's simple statement that the most important decision you ever will make is the decision whether you live in a friendly universe or a hostile universe.

  Wayne Dyer

  Simple, Decision, Friendly

  "Wayne Dyer Interview: On God and goodness, inspiration and presence". Interview with Ray Hemachandra, rayhemachandra.com. September 5, 2015.

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• No scientist or student of science, need ever read an original work of the past. As a general rule, he does not think of doing so. Rutherford was one of the greatest experimental physicists, but no nuclear scientist today would study his researches of fifty years ago. Their substance has all been infused into the common agreement, the textbooks, the contemporary papers, the living present.

  C.P. Snow

  Science, Past, Thinking

  11 Copy quote

• Our enemy is Al Qaeda and its allies, people who have publicly said they wish to attack the United States again, people who have publicly called on nuclear physicists and engineers to help them gain access to nuclear weapons, which, as the whole world knows, Pakistan has.

  Richard Holbrooke

  People, Enemy, Wish

  4 Copy quote

• I think it's science and physics are just starting to learn from all these experiments. These experiments have been carried out hundreds and hundreds of times in all sorts of ways that no physicist really questions the end point. I think that these experiments are very clearly telling us that consciousness is limitless and the ultimate reality.

  Robert Lanza

  Reality, Thinking, Way

  9 Copy quote

• Life would be stunted and narrow if we could feel no significance in the world around us beyond that which can be weighed and measured with the tools of the physicist or described by the metrical symbols of the mathematician.

  Arthur Eddington

  Nature, Would Be, Tools

  Sir Arthur Stanley Eddington (1933). “The nature of the physical world”

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• If the experimental physicist has already done a great deal of work in this field, nevertheless the theoretical physicist has still hardly begun to evaluate the experimental material which may lead him to conclusions about the structure of the atom.

  Johannes Stark

  Fields, Atoms, Done

  7 Copy quote

• The point is that the arts are important enough to have influenced the greatest minds and talents we know. Albert Einstein said that if he were not a physicist, he would probably be a musician.

  Mickey Hart

  Art, Mind, Important

  "There’s a Fire on the Mountain" by Mickey Hart, www.huffingtonpost.com. March 22, 2011.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I had the idea that it would be wonderful to be a physicist or a mathematician maybe 500 years ago around the time of Newton when there were really fundamental things just lying around to be discovered.

  David Chalmers

  Lying, Years, Ideas

  "David Chalmers on the Big Conundrum: Consciousness". Interview with Natasha Mitchel, www.abc.net.au. August 10, 2003.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Erwin Schrodinger has explained how he and his fellow physicists had agreed that they would report their new discoveries and experiments in quantum physics in the language of Newtonian physics. That is, they agreed to discuss and report the non-visual, electronic world in the language of the visual world of Newton.

  Marshall McLuhan

  Discovery, Media, World

  4 Copy quote

• Superstring theories provide a framework in which the force of gravity may be united with the other three forces in nature: the weak, electromagnetic and strong forces. Recent progress has shown that the most promising superstring theories follow from a single theory. For the last generation, physicists have studied five string theories and one close cousin. Recently it has become clear that these five or six theories are different limiting cases of one theory which, though still scarcely understood, is the candidate for superunification of the forces of nature.

  Edward Witten

  Strong, Cousin, Progress

  9 Copy quote

• Electronic calculators can solve problems which the man who made them cannot solve; but no government-subsidized commission of engineers and physicists could create a worm.

  Joseph Wood Krutch

  Science, Technology, Men

  1949 The Twelve Seasons,'February'.

  20 Copy quote

  Show source

• No one any longer pays attention to - if I may call it - the spirit of physics, the idea of discovery, the idea of understanding. I think it's difficult to make clear to the non-physicist the beauty of how it fits together, of how you can build a world picture, and the beauty that the laws of physics are immutable.

  Hans Bethe

  Thinking, Discovery, Law

  21 Copy quote

• Einstein and the Quantum is delightful to read, with numerous historical details that were new to me and cham1ing vignettes of Einstein and his colleagues. By avoiding mathematics, Stone makes his book accessible to general readers, but even physicists who are well versed in Einstein and his physics are likely to find new insights into the most remarkable mind of the modern era.

  Daniel Kleppner

  Book, Historical, Mind

  4 Copy quote