Physicist Quotes - Page 19

• Physicists have come to realize that mathematics, when used with sufficient care, is a proven pathway to truth.

  Brian Greene

  Pathways, Care, Realizing

  Brian Greene (2007). “The Fabric of the Cosmos: Space, Time, and the Texture of Reality”, p.162, Vintage

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• What makes the theory of relativity so acceptable to physicists in spite of its going against the principle of simplicity is its great mathematical beauty. This is a quality which cannot be defined, any more than beauty in art can be defined, but which people who study mathematics usually have no difficulty in appreciating.

  Paul Dirac

  Art, People, Appreciate

  Paul Adrien Maurice Dirac (1995). “Sammlung”, p.908, Cambridge University Press

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• The delicate and intricate pattern of competition and cooperation in the economic behavior of the hundreds of thousands of citizens of Stockholm offers a challenge to the economist that is perhaps as complex as the challenges of the physicist and the chemist.

  George Stigler

  Competition, Challenges, Citizens

  Nobel Banquet Speech, www.nobelprize.org. 1982.

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• I was a terrible high school student outside of the fact that I did well in physics, but there's a big difference between being good at physics and being a physicist, so I jettisoned that very quickly.

  Timothy Simons

  School, Differences, Facts

  "Jonah’s Arc". Interview with Emma Brown, www.interviewmagazine.com. May 19, 2015.

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• Neumann, to a physicist seeking help with a difficult problem: Simple. This can be solved by using the method of characteristics. Physicist: I'm afraid I don't understand the method of characteristics. Neumann: In mathematics you don't understand things. You just get used to them.

  John von Neumann

  Science, Simple, Understanding

  Quoted in Gary Zukav, The DancingWu Li Masters (1979)

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• It may be that DMT makes us able to perceive what the physicist call "dark matter" - the 95 per cent of the universe's mass that is known to exist but that at present remains invisible to our senses and instruments.

  Graham Hancock

  Dark, Dmt, May

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• Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge of Truth and Knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods.

  Albert Einstein

  Love, Inspirational, Funny

  Albert Einstein (2010). “The Ultimate Quotable Einstein”, p.188, Princeton University Press

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• I have an abiding interest in how ordinary people produce knowledge, and what it means for individuals to know the world. I thought I'd be a theoretical physicist because I love physicists' views of the world - I find general relativity and quantum theory thrilling - but I have always felt uneasy with the idea of an Ultimate Truth. One of the functions of science is to help us instrumentally; it helps us to build things like microchips and GPS satellites. But another function of science in the modern world is to help us feel "at home in the universe".

  Margaret Wertheim

  Mean, Home, People

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• The mystic and the physicist arrive at the same conclusion; one starting from the inner realm, the other from the outer world. The harmony between their views confirms the ancient Indian wisdom that Brahman, the ultimate reality without, is identical to Atman, the reality within.

  Fritjof Capra

  Science, Reality, Views

  Fritjof Capra, Pier Luigi Luisi (2014). “The Systems View of Life: A Unifying Vision”, p.286, Cambridge University Press

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• The strength and weakness of physicists is that we believe in what we can measure. And if we can't measure it, then we say it probably doesn't exist. And that closes us off to an enormous amount of phenomena that we may not be able to measure because they only happened once. For example, the Big Bang. ... That's one reason why they scoffed at higher dimensions for so many years. Now we realize that there's no alternative.

  Michio Kaku

  Believe, Science, Years

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• When confronted with the order and beauty of the universe and the strange coincidences of nature, it's 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

  Science, Order, Design

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• Bohm's interpretation of quantum physics indicated that at the subquantum level, the level in which the quantum potential operated, location ceased to exist. All points in space became equal to all other points in space, and it was meaningless to speak of anything as being separate from anything else. Physicists call this property 'nonlocality.'

  Chuck Missler

  Space, Levels, Location

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• Our science has become terrible, our research dangerous, our findings deadly. We physicists have to make peace with reality. Reality is not as strong as we are. We will ruin reality.

  Friedrich Durrenmatt

  Strong, Reality, Research

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• My teacher, Hopkins, often commented on the craving for certainty that led so many physicists into mysticism or into the Church and similar organisations ... Faith seems to be an occupational hazard for physicists.

  Norman Pirie

  Faith, Teacher, Science

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• Everything that you've learned: 'Make a lot of money, have a nice house'. But they never teach you at school how to relate, how to communicate with others, how to share values with others. ...They teach you how to make a living. You become an optometrist, he becomes a physicist, she becomes a structural engineer, he's an architect.  In the future, none of that. Everybody is trained to be a generalist, so they understand different cultures, different values, how we get to be the way we are. So no-one can ever use you for war or killing anybody or hurting anybody

  Jacque Fresco

  Hurt, War, Nice

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• Physicist is both to my mouth and ears so awkward that I think I shall never use it. The equivalent of three separate sounds of "I" in one word is too much.

  Michael Faraday

  Science, Thinking, Awkward

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• Quantum theory was split up into dialects. Different people describe the same experiences in remarkably different languages. This is confusing even to physicists.

  David Finkelstein

  People, Confusing, Different

  "Physics and Whitehead: quantum, process, and experience". Book editing by Timothy E. Eastman and Hank Keeton, 2012.

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• Physics has entered a remarkable era. Ideas that were once the realm of science fiction are now entering our theoretical — and maybe even experimental — grasp. Brand-new theoretical discoveries about extra dimensions have irreversibly changed how particle physicists, astrophysicists, and cosmologists now think about the world. The sheer number and pace of discoveries tells us that we've most likely only scratched the surface of the wondrous possibilities that lie in store. Ideas have taken on a life of their own.

  Lisa Randall

  Lying, Taken, Thinking

  "Warped Passages: Unraveling the Universe's Hidden Dimensions". Book by Lisa Randall, 2005.

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• At any one time there is a natural tendency among physicists to believe that we already know the essential ingredients of a comprehensive theory . But each time a new frontier of observation is broached we inevitably discover new phenomena which force us to modify substantially our previous conceptions. I believe this process to be unending, that the delights and challenges of unexpected discovery will continue always.

  Val Logsdon Fitch

  Believe, Discovery, Challenges

  "Les Prix Nobel" ("The Nobel Prizes 1980") edited by Wilhelm Odelberg, Nobel Foundation, Stockholm, www.nobelprize.org. 1981.

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• If physics is too difficult for the physicists, the nonphysicist may wonder whether he should try at all to grasp its complexities and ambiguities. It is undeniably an effort, but probably one worth making, for the basic questions are important and the new experimental results are often fascinating. And if the layman runs into serious perplexities, he can be consoled with the thought that the points which baffle him are more than likely the ones for which the professionals have not found satisfactory answers.

  Edward Condon

  Running, Effort, Important

  "Physics, in What is Science?: Twelve Eminent Scientists and Philosophers Explain Their Various Fields to the Layman". Book by James Roy Newman, published by Simon and Schuster, p. 102, 1955.

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• In reality, as any physicist will tell you, the physical world is made up of moving energy. All matter is energy.

  Frederick Lenz

  Moving, Buddhism, Science

  Frederick Lenz (1994). “Surfing the Himalayas: conversations and travels with Master Fwap”, Interglobal Seminars

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• I've never heard a person say, 'I had a rotten mother, but she's such a great physicist.

  Sonia Manzano

  Mother, Rotten, Heard

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• We have to give up the idea of realism to a far greater extent than most physicists believe today.

  Anton Zeilinger

  Giving Up, Believe, Ideas

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• Physics admits of a lovely unification, not just at the level of fundamental forces, but when considering its extent and implications. Classifications like "optics" or "thermodynamics" are just straitjackets, preventing physicists from seeing countless intersections.

  Ted Chiang

  Lovely, Fundamentals, Levels

  Ted Chiang (2016). “Arrival (Stories of Your Life MTI)”, p.52, Vintage

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• The development of quantum mechanics early in the twentieth century obliged physicists to change radically the concepts they used to describe the world.

  Alain Aspect

  Development, World, Mechanic

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