Physics Quotes - Page 19

• When modern physics exerts itself to establish the world's formula, what occurs thereby is this: the being of entities has resolved itself into the method of the totally calculable.

  Martin Heidegger

  World, Modern, Method

  11 Copy quote

• Nothing can be more incorrect than the assumption one sometimes meets with, that physics has one method, chemistry another, and biology a third.

  Thomas Huxley

  Assumption, Chemistry, Sometimes

  Thomas Henry Huxley (2011). “Collected Essays”, p.60, Cambridge University Press

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• You won't see me writing about particle physics, or even planetary geology, or chemistry. I practically failed chemistry, and if I had to write a book in any of those areas, I don't think it would go well.

  Mary Roach

  Book, Writing, Thinking

  "Spook and Stiff author Mary Roach". Interview with Donna Bowman, www.avclub.com. August 27, 2010.

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• I went to engineering school, I went to physics class. I said, 'Screw this, I don't want to be here. I'd much rather be at a club playing music.

  Huey Lewis

  School, Engineering, Class

  8 Copy quote

• In 1947 I defended my thesis on nuclear physics, and in 1948 I was included in a group of research scientists whose task was to develop nuclear weapons.

  Andrei Sakharov

  Groups, Tasks, Nuclear

  11 Copy quote

• In some ways I'm a frustrated scientist or mathematician. The amount of times I've thought I'd go back to university and do theoretical physics because I like the big questions, but really I know now that that's not quite me. What's me is to do it in novels.

  Scarlett Thomas

  Theoretical Physics, Frustrated, Way

  4 Copy quote

• For more than 200 years, materialists have promised that science will eventually explain everything in terms of physics and chemistry. Believers are sustained by the faith that scientific discoveries will justify their beliefs.

  Rupert Sheldrake

  Discovery, Years, Belief

  7 Copy quote

• As an undergraduate, I did maths and physics. That doesn't make me a scientist. So I try to read and understand and talk to scientists.

  Nicholas Stern

  Math, Trying, Scientist

  4 Copy quote

• 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.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• All those formal systems, in mathematics and physics and the philosophy of science, which claim to give foundations for certain truth are surely mistaken. I am tempted to say that we do not look for truth, but for knowledge. But I dislike this form of words, for two reasons. First of all, we do look for truth, however we define it, it is what we find that is knowledge. And second, what we fail to find is not truth, but certainty; the nature of truth is exactly the knowledge that we do find.

  Jacob Bronowski

  Philosophy, Two, Giving

  4 Copy quote

• Mathematics catalogues everything that is not self-contradictory; within that vast inventory, physics is an island of structures rich enough to contain their own beholders.

  Greg Egan

  Islands, Self, Inventory

  4 Copy quote

• Physics is a hobby of mine, as much as a person of limited intelligence can understand physics.

  Arthur D. Levinson

  Hobbies, Persons, Mines

  6 Copy quote

• A poet once said, "The whole universe is in a glass of wine." We will probably never know in what sense he meant that, for poets do not write to be understood... How vivid is the claret, pressing its existence into the consciousness that watches it! If our small minds, for some convenience, divide this glass of wine, this universe, into parts - physics, biology, geology, astronomy, psychology, and so on - remember that nature does not know it! So let us put it all back together, not forgetting ultimately what it is for. Let it give us one more final pleasure: drink it and forget it all!

  Richard P. Feynman

  Writing, Wine, Glasses

  "The Feynman Lectures on Physics (volume I; lecture 3: "The Relation of Physics to Other Sciences")". Book by Richard P. Feynman, Robert B. Leighton and Matthew Sands, 1964.

  11 Copy quote

  Show source

• Teaching physics at the University, and more general lecturing to wider audiences has been a major concern.

  Antony Hewish

  Teaching, Concern, Audience

  8 Copy quote

• 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

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• If the task of scientific methodology is to piece together an account of what scientists actually do, then the testimony of biologists should be heard with specially close attention. Biologists work very close to the frontier between bewilderment and understanding.
  Biology is complex, messy and richly various, like real life; it travels faster nowadays than physics or chemistry (which is just as well, since it has so much farther to go), and it travels nearer to the ground. It should therefore give us a specially direct and immediate insight into science in the making.

  Peter Medawar

  Real, Science, Giving

  Peter Brian Medawar (1969). “Induction and intuition in scientific thought”

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The fact that science led me to spiritual insight is appropriate because the latest discoveries in physics and cell research are forging new links between the worlds of Science and Spirit. These realms were split apart in the days of Descartes centuries ago. However, I truly believe that only when Spirit and Science are reunited will we be afforded the means to a better world.

  Bruce H. Lipton

  Spiritual, Believe, Mean

  Bruce H. Lipton (2010). “The Biology of Belief: Unleashing the Power of Consciousness, Matter and Miracles: Easyread Large Edition”, p.230, ReadHowYouWant.com

  69 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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

  9 Copy quote

• There can be no final truth in ethics any more than in physics, until the last man has had his experience and said his say.

  William James

  Men, Finals, Lasts

  William James (2010). “The Will to Believe: And Other Essays in Popular Philosophy”, p.208, The Floating Press

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• In the world of physics we watch a shadowgraph performance of the drama of familiar life. The shadow of my elbow rests on the shadow table as the shadow ink flows over the shadow paper. It is all symbolic, and as a symbol the physicist leaves it. ... The frank realisation that physical science is concerned with a world of shadows is one of the most significant of recent advances.

  Arthur Eddington

  Drama, Shadow, Ink

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

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The fundamental principle of human action, the law, that is to political economy what the law of gravitation is to physics is that men seek to gratify their desires with the least exertion

  Henry George

  Men, Law, Political

  Henry George (2006). “Progress and Poverty”, p.147, Cosimo, Inc.

  12 Copy quote

  Show source

• The first rule of world-building is available physics, which basically means that if you want it to feel real, it has to follow the same rules as this world, from gravity to how human behaviour works. If you have a fantasy element that doesnt obey the laws of physics, make sure that it has a fantasy explanation.

  Trudi Canavan

  Real, Mean, Law

  7 Copy quote

• I was going to engineering school but fell in love with physics.

  Leonard Susskind

  School, Engineering

  7 Copy quote

• My origami creations, in accordance with the laws of nature, require the use of geometry, science, and physics. They also encompass religion, philosophy, and biochemistry. Overall, I want you to discover the joy of creation by your own handthe possibility of creation from paper is infinite.

  Akira Yoshizawa

  Philosophy, Law, Joy

  64 Copy quote

• Physiology is the science which treats of the properties of organic bodies, animal and vegetable, of the phenomena they present, and of the laws which govern their actions. Inorganic substances are the objects of other sciences, - physics and chemistry.

  Johannes Peter Muller

  Animal, Vegetables, Law

  19 Copy quote