Physicist Quotes - Page 19

• 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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• 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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• 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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• Intellectual growth should commence at birth and cease only at death.

  Albert Einstein

  Inspirational, Life, Education

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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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• Physicists and astronomers see their own implications in the world being round, but to me it means that only one-third of the world is asleep at any given time and the other two-thirds is up to something.

  Dean Rusk

  Mean, Science, Two

  Speech to American Bar Association, Atlanta, Ga., 22 Oct. 1964

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• Physicist Isador Isaac Rabi, who won a Nobel Prize for inventing a technique that permitted scientists to probe the structure of atoms and molecules in the 1930s, attributed his success to the way his mother used to greet him when he came home from school each day. "Did you ask any good questions today, Isaac?" she would say.

  Richard Saul Wurman

  Success, Mother, Home

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• The news today about 'Atomic bombs' is so horrifying one is stunned. The utter folly of these lunatic physicists to consent to do such work for war-purposes: calmly plotting the destruction of the world! Such explosives in men's hands, while their moral and intellectual status is declining, is about as useful as giving out firearms to all inmates of a gaol and then saying that you hope 'this will ensure peace'. But one good thing may arise out of it, I suppose, if the write-ups are not overheated: Japan ought to cave in. Well we're in God's hands. But He does not look kindly on Babel-builders.

  J. R. R. Tolkien

  War, Writing, Men

  Letter to his son Christopher Tolkien on August 09, 1945. "The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien", 1981.

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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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• Steven Hawking is a brilliant physicist and when it comes to theology I can say he's a brilliant physicist.

  Guy Consolmagno

  Brilliant, Theology, I Can

  "Pope's astronomer says he would baptise an alien if it asked him" by Alok Jha, www.theguardian.com. September 17, 2010.

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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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• Through experiments over the past few decades physicists have discovered matter to be completely mutable into other particles or energy and vice-versa and on a subatomic level, matter does not exist with certainty in definite places, but rather shows 'tendencies' to exist. Quantum physics is beginning to realise that the Universe appears to be a dynamic web of interconnected and inseparable energy patterns. If the universe is indeed composed of such a web, there is logically no such thing as a part. This implies we are not separated parts of a whole but rather we are the Whole.

  Barbara Brennan

  Past, Discovery, Experience

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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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• When I was young, Stephen Hawking wasn't the world's most famous physicist. The fame didn't arrive until the publication of "A Brief History of Time," by which time I was in my late teens. When I was a child, he was well known among physicists, but they are a fairly select, serious bunch, not much given to celebrity idolizing.

  Stephen Hawking

  Children, Teens, World

  "Q & A: Stephen Hawking and daughter Lucy". Today Interview, www.nbcnews.com. November 1, 2007.

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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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• To a physicist life looks nothing short of a miracle. It's just amazing what living things can do.

  Paul Davies

  Miracle, Looks, Living Things

  "Big Think Interview With Paul Davies". Interview with Austin Allen, bigthink.com. April 15, 2010.

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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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