Steven Weinberg Quotes - Page 2

Quotes about:

• Rational argument can be defeated by refusing to argue rationally.

  Steven Weinberg

  Science, Arguing, Argument

  9 Copy quote

• One of the great achievements of science has been, if not to make it impossible for intelligent people to be religious, then at least to make it possible for them not to be religious. We should not retreat from this accomplishment.

  Steven Weinberg

  Religious, Intelligent, People

  Steven Weinberg (2012). “Facing Up”, p.242, Harvard University Press

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• In science we don't have prophets. We have heroes, but not prophets.

  Steven Weinberg

  Hero, Prophet

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• Most scientists I know don't care enough about religion even to call themselves atheists.

  Steven Weinberg

  Atheist, Atheism, Care

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• It is positively spooky how the physicist finds the mathematician has been there before him or her.

  Steven Weinberg

  Spooky, Mathematician, Physicist

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• The universe is an enormous direct product of representations of symmetry groups.

  Steven Weinberg

  Beauty, Art, Groups

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• I now want to tell three stories about advances in twentieth-century physics. A curious fact emerges in these tales: time and again physicists have been guided by their sense of beauty not only in developing new theories but even in judging the validity of physical theories once they are developed. Simplicity is part of what I mean by beauty, but it is a simplicity of ideas, not simplicity of a mechanical sort that can be measured by counting equations or symbols.

  Steven Weinberg

  Beauty, Art, Mean

  36 Copy quote

• If history is any guide at all, it seems to me to suggest that there is a final theory. In this century we have seen a convergence of the arrows of explanation, like the convergence of meridians toward the North Pole.

  Steven Weinberg

  Science, Arrows, History

  7 Copy quote

• It does not matter whether you win or lose, what matters is whether I win or lose!

  Steven Weinberg

  Funny, Winning, What Matters

  70 Copy quote

• My advice is to go for the messes - that's where the action is.

  Steven Weinberg

  Advice, Action, Mess

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• Alas, Islam turned against science in the twelfth century. The most influential figure was the philosopher Abu Hamid al-Ghazzali, who argued in The Incoherence of the Philosophers against the very idea of laws of nature, on the ground that any such laws would put God's hands in chains. According to al-Ghazzali, a piece of cotton placed in a flame does not darken and smoulder because of the heat, but because God wants it to darken and smoulder. After al-Ghazzali, there was no more science worth mentioning in Islamic countries.

  Steven Weinberg

  Country, Islamic, Flames

  "Islam and science – the 'hideous' way". www.the-tls.co.uk. January 18, 2007.

  15 Copy quote

• If (the antiproton) had not been discovered, the foundations of physics really would have crumbled.

  Steven Weinberg

  Foundation, Physics, Ifs

  8 Copy quote

• In our universe we are tuned into the frequency that corresponds to physical reality. But there are an infinite number of parallel realities coexisting with us in the same room, although we cannot tune into them.

  Steven Weinberg

  Reality, Numbers, Tunes

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• As for me, I have just enough confidence about the multiverse to bet the lives of both Andrei Linde and Martin Rees’s dog.

  Steven Weinberg

  Dog, Enough, Multiverse

  Steven Weinberg (2012). “Lake Views”, p.204, Harvard University Press

  9 Copy quote

• I can hope that this long sad story, this progression of priests and ministers and rabbis and ulamas and imams and bonzes and bodhisattvas, will come to an end. I hope this is something to which science can contribute ... it may be the most important contribution that we can make.

  Steven Weinberg

  Long, Important, Atheism

  11 Copy quote

• [C]reationists [and] other religious enthusiasts [are], in many parts of the world ..., the most dangerous adversaries of science.

  Steven Weinberg

  Religious, Atheism, World

  14 Copy quote

• It is almost irrestible for humans to believe that we have some special relation to the universe, that human life is not just a more-or-less farcical outcome of a chain of accidents reaching back to the first three minutes, but that we were somehow built in from the beginning.

  Steven Weinberg

  Life, Believe, Special

  Steven Weinberg (1977). “The first three minutes: a modern view of the origin of the universe”, Basic Books (AZ)

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• In trying to get votes for the Superconducting Super Collider, I was very much involved in lobbying members of Congress, testifying to them, bothering them, and I never heard any of them talk about postmodernism or social constructivism. You have to be very learned to be that wrong.

  Steven Weinberg

  Trying, Lobbying, Vote

  Steven Weinberg (2012). “Facing Up”, p.105, Harvard University Press

  11 Copy quote

• How then did we come to the "standard model"? And how has it supplanted other theories, like the steady state model? It is a tribute to the essential objectivity of modern astrophysics that this consensus has been brought about, not by shifts in philosophical preference or by the influence of astrophysical mandarins, but by the pressure of empirical data.

  Steven Weinberg

  Philosophy, Philosophical, Science

  18 Copy quote

• It was one time when people thought the value of the fine structure constant was important. Now of course it's still important, of course, as a practical matter,but we now know that the value it has is a function, that in any fundamental theory you derive the fine structure constant as a function of all sorts of mass ratios and so on and it's not really that fundamental.

  Steven Weinberg

  People, Religion, Important

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• Any possible universe could be explained as the work of some sort of designer. Even a universe that is completely chaotic...could be supposed to have been designed by an idiot.

  Steven Weinberg

  Evolution, Idiot, Designer

  "A Designer Universe?". Article by Steven Weinberg, www.physlink.com. April, 1999.

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• Even though their arguments did not invoke religion, I think we all know what's behind these arguments. They're trying to protect religious beliefs from contradiction by science. They used to do it by prohibiting teachers from teaching evolution at all; then they wanted to teach intelligent design as an alternative theory; now they want the supposed "weaknesses" in evolution pointed out. But it's all the same program - it's all an attempt to let religious ideas determine what is taught in science courses.

  Steven Weinberg

  Teacher, Religious, Teaching

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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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• 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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• I don't need to argue here that the evil in the world proves that the universe is not designed, but only that there are no signs of benevolence that might have shown the hand of a designer.

  Steven Weinberg

  Hands, Evil, Might

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

  14 Copy quote

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