Physics Quotes - Page 34

• The content of physics is the concern of physicists, its effect the concern of all men.

  Friedrich Durrenmatt

  Men, Physicist, Concern

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• We are surrounded by the absurd excess of the universe. By meaningless bulk, vastness without size, power without consequence. The stubborn iteration that is present without being felt. Nothing the spirit can marry. Merely phenomenon and its physics. An endless, endless of going on. No habitat where the brain can recognize itself. No pertinence for the heart. Helpless duplication.

  Jack Gilbert

  Heart, Brain, Habitat

  Jack Gilbert (2012). “Collected Poems”, p.293, Knopf

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• What if consciousness is the ground of being? What if the possibilities discovered by quantum physics are the possibilities of consciousness itself? Remember there is already a class of people who think in this way. They are called mystics, and they say it is all God. Finally, a few scientists dared to say that some of the characteristics attributed to God are similar to what we describe as consciousness.

  Amit Goswami

  Thinking, Class, People

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• Well, I was always... I used to get 100% in physics and chemistry and mathematics (well, maybe a couple of points off in mathematics), and that was in high school.

  James Doohan

  Couple, School, Chemistry

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• Thanks to my fortunate idea of introducing the relativity principle into physics, you (and others) now enormously overrate my scientific abilities, to the point where this makes me quite uncomfortable.

  Albert Einstein

  Ideas, Principles, Thanks

  Albert Einstein (2010). “The Ultimate Quotable Einstein”, p.357, Princeton University Press

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• What is especially striking and remarkable is that in fundamental physics, a beautiful or elegant theory is more likely to be right than a theory that is inelegant. A theory appears to be beautiful or elegant (or simple, if you prefer) when it can be expressed concisely in terms of mathematics we already have. Symmetry exhibits the simplicity. The Foundamental Law is such that the different skins of the onion resemble one another and therefore the math for one skin allows you to express beautifully and simply the phenomenon of the next skin.

  Murray Gell-Mann

  Beautiful, Math, Simple

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• It is impossible to imagine a four-dimensional space. I personally find it hard enough to visualize a three-dimensional space!

  Stephen Hawking

  Space, Three, Four

  Stephen Hawking (2009). “A Brief History Of Time: From Big Bang To Black Holes”, p.25, Random House

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• When people on airplanes ask me what I do, I used to say I was a physicist, which ended the discussion. I once said I was a cosmologist, but they started asking me about makeup, and the title 'astronomer' gets confused with astrologer. Now I say I make maps.

  Margaret Geller

  Confused, Airplane, Makeup

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• Every student of physics knows the axiom 'nature abhors a vacuum.' A little known corollary is that 'rowing coaches detest sending their crews in early.' Coaches will always find something to fill the end-of-practice vacuum.

  Brad Alan Lewis

  Practice, Vacuums, Littles

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• In modern physics, the universe is experienced as a dynamic inseparable whole which always includes the observer in an essential way.

  Fritjof Capra

  Essentials, Way, Awareness

  Fritjof Capra (2010). “The Tao of Physics: An Exploration of the Parallels Between Modern Physics and Eastern Mysticism”, p.77, Shambhala Publications

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• There is beauty in space, and it is orderly. There is no weather, and there is regularity. It is predictable. Just look at our little Explorer; you can set your clock by it-literally; it is more accurate than your clock. Everything in space obeys the laws of physics. If you know these laws, and obey them, space will treat you kindly.

  Wernher von Braun

  Law, Weather, Space

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• The seemingly insuperable difficulties of deep-space travel suggest an intention to keep us fixed at home in our own solar system, and the physical nature of our part of the Universe, as well as the basic rules of physics and chemistry, have a warning look about them, like barriers designed to isolate intelligent life. This means that for us, unlike the situation for humble microorganisms, deep-space travel is probably a stark impossibility.

  Fred Hoyle

  Future, Humble, Mean

  Fred Hoyle (1983). “The Intelligent Universe”

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• So much of what we said sounded crazy, yet none of it was false... as if two theoretical physicists stood on stage to say that when we travel near lightspeed, we get younger than nontravellers; that a mile of space next to the sun is differnt than a mile of space next to the earth because the sun-mile space is curved more than the the earth-mile. Silly ideas, worth the admission price in smiles, but they're true. Is high-energy physics interesting because it's true or because it's crazy?

  Richard Bach

  Truth, Crazy, Silly

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• "Integrative" simply means that this approach attempts to include as many important truths from as many disciplines as possible-from East as well as the West, from premodern and modern and postmodern, from the hard sciences of physics to the tender sciences of spirituality.

  Ken Wilber

  Truth, Mean, Discipline

  Ken Wilber (2007). “A Brief History of Everything”, p.19, Shambhala Publications

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• Science Fiction is not just about the future of space ships travelling to other planets, it is fiction based on science and I am using science as my basis for my fiction, but it's the science of prehistory - palaeontology and archaeology - rather than astronomy or physics.

  Jean M. Auel

  Journey, Space, Ships

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• The present situation in physics is as if we know chess, but we don't know one or two rules.

  Richard P. Feynman

  Science, Two, Chess

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• If you want to penetrate into the heart of physics, then let yourself be initiated into the mysteries of poetry.

  Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

  Heart, Want, Mystery

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• I continued to study Math and Physics on my own, but one and a half years later I realized that I did want to be a composer, and after that I never changed my mind.

  Gyorgy Ligeti

  Math, Years, Mind

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• Eight months later, having left Columbia, I was studying physics in a summer program and working in Colorado when I decided to enroll as a graduate student in biophysics.

  Sidney Altman

  Summer, Eight, Colorado

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• If in physics there's something you don't understand, you can always hide behind the uncharted depths of nature. You can always blame God. You didn't make it so complex yourself. But if your program doesn't work, there is no one to hide behind. You cannot hide behind an obstinate nature. If it doesn't work, you've messed up.

  Edsger Dijkstra

  Depth, Behind You, Blame

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• There is no true understanding of Biology without Chemistry. And there's no true understanding of Chemistry without Physics.

  Neil deGrasse Tyson

  Understanding, Chemistry, Biology

  Twitter post from Apr 24, 2012

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• As the twentieth century began, science equaled a materialistic worldview. As the twenty-first century began, the worldview of science, at least of physics and astronomy, may have traded place with that of religion. Consider Einstein's famous equation E = mc2. Nothing of matter dies but continues on in another form, elsewhere. The church divines and theologians for two thousand years have devised arguments and "proofs" of immortality but nothing equal to this.

  Huston Smith

  Years, Two, Religion

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• For me, science is already fantastical enough. Unlocking the secrets of nature with fundamental physics or cosmology or astrobiology leads you into a wonderland compared with which beliefs in things like alien abductions pale into insignificance.

  Paul Davies

  Secret, Wonderland, Fundamentals

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• Traditionally, scientists have treated the laws of physics as simply 'given,' elegant mathematical relationships that were somehow imprinted on the universe at its birth, and fixed thereafter. Inquiry into the origin and nature of the laws was not regarded as a proper part of science.

  Paul Davies

  Law, Inquiry, Birth

  "Yes, the universe looks like a fix. But that doesn't mean that a god fixed it" by Paul Davies, www.theguardian.com. June 25, 2007.

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• When I was a student, the laws of physics were regarded as completely off limits. The job of the scientist, we were told, is to discover the laws and apply them, not inquire into their provenance.

  Paul Davies

  Jobs, Law, Limits

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