Physics Quotes - Page 26

• Particle physics suffers more from being infected by the socio-political mood of the day than from lack of spectacular opportunities for major and profound discoveries.

  Leon M. Lederman

  Opportunity, Discovery, Profound

  "Future of the field calls for charisma and courage" by Kurt Riesselmann, www.fnal.gov. June 28, 2002.

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• My main professional interest during the 1970s has been in the dramatic change of concepts and ideas that has occurred in physics during the first three decades of the century, and that is still being elaborated in our current theories of matter. The new concepts in physics have brought about a profound change in our world view; from the mechanistic conception of Descartes and Newton to a holistic and ecological view, a view which I have found to be similar to the views of mystics of all ages and traditions.

  Fritjof Capra

  Views, Ideas, Our World

  "The Turning Point". Book by Fritjof Capra, www.juwing.sp.ru. 1982.

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• There's no evidence whatsoever that Darwin had anything useful to say or anything to say period about how life began or how the universe began or how gravity began or how physics began or fluid motion or how thermodynamics began. He had nothing to say about that whatsoever.

  Ben Stein

  Fluid, Gravity, Periods

  4 Copy quote

• In the eighteenth century it was often convenient to regard man as a clockwork automaton. In the nineteenth century, with Newtonian physics pretty well assimilated and a lot of work in thermodynamics going on, man was looked on as a heat engine, about 40 per cent efficient. Now in the twentieth century, with nuclear and subatomic physics a going thing, man had become something which absorbs X-rays, gamma rays and neutrons.

  Thomas Pynchon

  Men, Nuclear, Neutrons

  Thomas Pynchon (2012). “V.”, p.187, Penguin

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• If you pursue a distancer, he or she will distance more. Consider it a fundamental law of physics.

  Harriet Lerner

  Distance, Law, Fundamentals

  4 Copy quote

• No matter how much creativity goes into it, cooking is an art. Or perhaps I should say a craft. It abides by absolute rules, physics, chemistry, etc. and that means that unless you understand the science you cannot reach the art. We're not talking about painting here. Cooking's more like engineering. I happen to think that there is great beauty in great engineering.

  Alton Brown

  Art, Creativity, Mean

  "Alton Brown Answers, At Last". Slashdot Interview, interviews.slashdot.org. September 12, 2002.

  14 Copy quote

  Show source

• The ultimate aim of the modern movement in biology is in fact to explain all biology in terms of physics and chemistry.

  Francis Crick

  Facts, Movement, Chemistry

  "Of Molecules and Men". Book by Francis Crick, p. 10, 1966.

  39 Copy quote

  Show source

• Changi became my university instead of my prison. Among the inmates there were experts in all walks of life - the high and the low roads. I studied and absorbed everything I could from physics to counterfeiting, but most of all I learned the art of surviving.

  James Clavell

  Art, Experts, Inmates

  "James Clavell, Best-Selling Storyteller of Far Eastern Epics, Is Dead at 69" by William Grimes, www.nytimes.com. September 8, 1994.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• So, I'm not the only one who believes that there is such a thing as "the law of gravity," and if it's a law, it can be violated. If you hit the ground at 120 mph from 1,000 feet, you will suffer the consequences of violating what physics.about.com calls the law of gravity.

  Ray Comfort

  Believe, Mph, Law

  "The attraction of the earth". Atheist Central, February 24, 2010.

  16 Copy quote

  Show source

• All the standard equations of mathematical physics can be separated and solved in Kerr geometry.

  Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar

  Standards, Mathematical, Geometry

  "Proceedings of the Gibbs Symposium: Yale University, May 15-17, 1989" by D. G. Caldi, ‎George D. Mostow, (p. 230), 1989.

  16 Copy quote

  Show source

• I just really like ants, and I really like science. I was interested and curious about the quantum world and the physics behind how it all works.

  Evangeline Lilly

  Ants, World, Curious

  4 Copy quote

• After Montesquieu, the next great addition to Sociology (which is the term I may be allowed to invent to designate Social Physics) was made by Condorcet, proceeding on the views suggested by his illustrious friend Turgot.

  Auguste Comte

  Views, May, Next

  Auguste Comte (1858). “The Positive Philosophy of Auguste Comte”, p.444

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• The idea of an isolated American painting , so popular in this country during the thirties, seems absurd to me, just as the idea of a purely American mathematics or physics would seem absurd... And in another sense, the problem doesn't exist at all; or, if it did, would solve itself: An American is an American and his painting would naturally be qualified by the fact, whether he wills or not. But the basic problems of contemporary painting are independent of any one country.

  Jackson Pollock

  Country, Independent, Ideas

  Jackson Pollock (1958). “Jackson Pollock, 1912-1956”

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Three principles - the conformability of nature to herself, the applicability of the criterion of simplicity, and the utility of certain parts of mathematics in describing physical reality - are thus consequences of the underlying law of the elementary particles and their interactions. Those three principles need not be assumed as separate metaphysical postulates. Instead, they are emergent properties of the fundamental laws of physics.

  Murray Gell-Mann

  Reality, Law, Effectiveness

  "Murray Gell-Mann: Selected Papers". Book by Murray Gell-Mann and Harald Fritzsch, 2010.

  16 Copy quote

  Show source

• We know from astronomy that the universe had a beginning, from physics that the future is both open and unpredictable, from geology and paleontology that the whole of life has been a process of change and transformation. From biology we know that our tissues are not impenetrable reservoirs of vital magic, but a stunning matrix of complex wonders, ultimately explicable in terms of biochemistry and molecular biology. With such knowledge we can see, perhaps for the first time, why a Creator would have allowed our species to be fashioned by the process of evolution.

  Kenneth R. Miller

  Magic, Paleontology, Tissues

  12 Copy quote

• Following Korzybski, I put things in probabilities, not absolutes... My only originality lies in applying this zetetic attitude outside the hardest of the hard sciences, physics, to softer sciences and then to non-sciences like politics, ideology, jury verdicts and, of course, conspiracy theory.

  Robert Anton Wilson

  Attitude, Lying, Originality

  High Times Interview, 2003.

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• In mathematics, as in physics, so much depends on chance, on a propitious moment.

  Stanislaw Ulam

  Chance, Moments, Mathematics

  "Adventures of a Mathematician" by Stanislaw Ulam, Third Edition, (p. 95), 1991.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• There may be such a thing as habitual luck. People who are said to be lucky at cards probably have certain hidden talents for those games in which skill plays a role. It is like hidden parameters in physics, this ability that does not surface and that I like to call "habitual luck".

  Stanislaw Ulam

  Games, Play, Skills

  "Adventures of a Mathematician" by Stanislaw Ulam, Third Edition, (p. 119), 1991.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Going to the moon is not a matter of physics but of economics.

  John R. Platt

  Moon, Matter, Economics

  "Future: A Recent History". Book by Lawrence R. Samuel, p. 92, June 2009.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Twentieth-century developments in science support a new animism. Developments in physics have led to a world of energetic events which seem to be self-moving and to behave in unpredictable ways. And recent studies in biology seem to demonstrate that bacteria and macromolecules have elemental forms of perception, memory, choice, and self-motion.

  David Ray Griffin

  Memories, Moving, Self

  David Ray Griffin (1989). “God and Religion in the Postmodern World: Essays in Postmodern Theology”, p.88, SUNY Press

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• When people think science and cooking, they have no idea that it's not correctly expressed. We're actually applying the scientific method. People think chemistry and physics are science, but the scientific method is something else.... It's the science that the world of cooking generates: science of butter; science of the croissant.

  Ferran Adria

  Thinking, Ideas, People

  25 Copy quote

• 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.

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• It's amazing to me that not only can we put a probe around Saturn and get images of its moons, but our math and physics are so freaking accurate we can say, "Hey, you know what? On this date at this time if we turn Cassini that way we'll see a moon over 2 million kilometers away pass in front of another one nearly 3 million kilometers away." Every morning, I have a 50/50 chance of finding my keys. That kinda puts things in perspective.

  Phil Plait

  Morning, Math, Moon

  "A Marvelous Night for a (Saturn) Moon Dance". blogs.discovermagazine.com. February 10, 2010.

  13 Copy quote

  Show source

• I regard physics as that subset of magic that works fairly reliably. I regard magick, in the traditional sense, as a kind of physics that we strive to understand and render more reliable. So it all comes down to the same thing, a quest to understand and manipulate the world with a self-consistent and coherent theory .

  Peter J. Carroll

  Self, Magic, World

  "The Apophenion : A Chaos Magick Paradigm". Book by Peter J. Carroll, 2008.

  15 Copy quote

  Show source

• In thermodynamics as well as in other branches of molecular physics , the laws of phenomena have to a certain extent been anticipated, and their investigation facilitated, by the aid of hypotheses as to occult molecular structures and motions with which such phenomena are assumed to be connected. The hypothesis which has answered that purpose in the case of thermodynamics, is called that of "molecular vortices," or otherwise, the "centrifugal theory of elasticity.

  William John Macquorn Rankine

  Law, Purpose, Branches

  William John Macquorn Rankine (1869). “A Manual of the Steam Engine and Other Prime Movers by William John Macquorn Rankine”, p.32

  6 Copy quote

  Show source