Physics Quotes - Page 25

• Physicists often quote from T. H. White's epic novel The Once and Future King, where a society of ants declares, "Everything not forbidden is compulsory." In other words, if there isn't a basic principle of physics forbidding time travel, then time travel is necessarily a physical possibility. (The reason for this is the uncertainty principle. Unless something is forbidden, quantum effects and fluctuations will eventually make it possible if we wait long enough. Thus, unless there is a law forbidding it, it will eventually occur.)

  Michio Kaku

  Kings, Science, Epic

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• In the most modern theories of physics probability seems to have replaced aether as "the nominative of the verb 'to undulate'."

  Arthur Eddington

  Science, Verbs, Modern

  Arthur Eddington (2012). “New Pathways in Science: Messenger Lectures (1934)”, p.110, Cambridge University Press

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• The difficulty lay with the mind accommodating itself to the notion of the plane, with all its weight, defying gravity, staying aloft. She understood the aerodynamics of flight, could comprehend the laws of physics that made flight possible, but her heart, at the moment, would have none of it. Her heart knew the plane could fall out of the sky.

  Anita Shreve

  Fall, Heart, Law

  Anita Shreve (1998). “The Pilot's Wife”, Little, Brown

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• How odd that Americans, and not just their presidents, have come to think of their Constitution as something separable from the government it's supposed to constitute. In theory, it should be as binding on rulers as the laws of physics are on engineers who design bridges; in practice, its axioms have become mere options. Of course engineers don't have to take oaths to respect the law of gravity; reality gives them no choice. Politics, as we see, makes all human laws optional for politicians.

  Joseph Sobran

  Thinking, Reality, Government

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• I'm a bit of a layman physics junkie. I don't really understand it, but I love trying to understand it.

  Laura San Giacomo

  Trying, Junkie, Layman

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• I think the writing of literature should give pleasure. What else should it be about? It is not nuclear physics. It actually has to give pleasure or it is worth nothing.

  Stephen Greenblatt

  Writing, Thinking, Giving

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• Quantum physics is a bit of a passion of mine. It's extraordinary. There's a branch of mathematics that is based on lunacy, and that's wonderful.

  Bob Hoskins

  Passion, Branches, Wonderful

  "This much I know: Bob Hoskins". Interview with Bob Hoskins, www.theguardian.com. September 18, 2010.

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• Physics is nothing but the ABC's. Nature is an equation with an unknown, a Hebrew word which is written only with consonants to which reason has to add the dots.

  Johann Georg Hamann

  Abc's, Add, Dots

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• Recent studies have considered the detection of a spaceship visiting our parish of the galaxy. In my opinion that last thought should bring a blush to every human cheek... Fecklessness might be the main theme of the aliens' report on the new-found source of radio pollution ... that emanates from beings who have mastered a lot of physics, chemistry and biology and yet let their children starve-while all around their planet the energy of their mother star runs to waste in a desert of space.

  Nigel Calder

  Mother, Running, Stars

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• Originally I had planned to revert to nuclear physics there, in particular the structure of the deuteron.

  Walter Kohn

  Nuclear, Structure, Particular

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• I have sold more books on physics than Madonna has on sex.

  Stephen Hawking

  Sex, Book, Science

  "The Illustrated A Brief History of Time". Book by Stephen Hawking, 1996.

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• But even physics cannot be defined from an atomic topography.

  Michael Polanyi

  Topography, Defined

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• In 1948 I was appointed to a Lectureship in Physics and in 1949 elected to a Fellowship at Trinity College.

  Martin Ryle

  College, Fellowship, Trinity

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• 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.

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• 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

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• 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

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• 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

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• 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

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• 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

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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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• 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

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• I think the answer of course is that space and time are not these hard external objects. Again we're, scientists have been building from one side of nature (physics) without considering the other side (life in consciousness). Neither side exists without the other. They cannot be divorced from one another or else there is no reality.

  Robert Lanza

  Reality, Thinking, Space

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• My undergraduate degree was in history, and I wish I had been smart enough to really excel at maths, physics, chemistry or biology because... the voyagers and adventurers and real contributors - that's where they come from.

  Michael Moritz

  Real, Smart, Math

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• The discovery of radioactivity created a momentary chaos in chemistry and physics; but it soon led to a fuller interpretation of the old ideas. It dispersed many difficulties, harmonized many discords, and yea, more! It shewed the substance of Universe as a simplicity of Light and Life, manners to compose atoms, themselves capable of deeper self-realization through fresh complexities and organizations, each with its own peculiar powers and pleasures, each pursuing its path through the world where all things are possible.

  Aleister Crowley

  Organization, Ideas, Light

  "Magick Book IV: Liber ABA". Book by Aleister Crowley. Appendix VI: A few principal rituals - Liber Reguli, 1936.

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• It seems significant that according to quantum physics the indestructibility of energy on one hand which expresses its timeless existence and the appearance of energy in space and time on the other hand correspond to two contradictory (complementary) aspects of reality. In fact, both are always present, but in individual cases the one or the other may be more pronounced.

  Wolfgang Pauli

  Reality, Two, Space

  C. G. Jung, Wolfgang Pauli (2014). “Atom and Archetype: The Pauli/Jung Letters, 1932-1958”, p.185, Princeton University Press

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