Thermodynamics Quotes

• I am, and ever will be, a white-socks, pocket-protector, nerdy engineer - born under the second law of thermodynamics, steeped in steam tables, in love with free-body diagrams, transformed by Laplace, and propelled by compressible flow.

  Neil Armstrong

  Law, White, Pockets

  "The Engineered Century". Neil Armstrong's remarks at the National Engineers Week on behalf of the National Academy of Engineering at the National Press Club, www.nae.edu. February 22, 2000.

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• Classical thermodynamics ... is the only physical theory of universal content which I am convinced ... will never be overthrown.

  Albert Einstein

  Science, Theory, Universal

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• Thermodynamics is a funny subject. The first time you go through it, you don't understand it at all. The second time you go through it, you think you understand it, except for one or two small points. The third time you go through it, you know you don't understand it, but by that time you are so used to it, it doesn't bother you any more.

  Arnold Sommerfeld

  Thinking, Two, Firsts

  "Physical Chemistry in Depth". Textbook by Johannes Karl Fink, p. 1, 1992.

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• Nothing in life is certain except death, taxes, and the second law of thermodynamics.

  Seth Lloyd

  Law, Life Is, Metabolism

  Nature 430, 971, August 26, 2004.

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• The Second Law of Thermodynamics: If you think things are in a mess now, just wait!

  Jim Warner

  Funny, Science, Technology

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• If your theory is found to be against the second law of thermodynamics I give you no hope; there is nothing for it but to collapse in deepest humiliation.

  Arthur Eddington

  Law, Giving, Found

  Arthur Eddington (2012). “The Nature of the Physical World: Gifford Lectures (1927)”, p.74, Cambridge University Press

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• A theory is the more impressive the greater the simplicity of its premises is, the more different kinds of things it relates, and the more extended is its area of applicability. Therefore the deep impression which classical thermodynamics made upon me. It is the only physical theory of universal content concerning which I am convinced that within the framework of the applicability of its basic concepts, it will never be overthrown.

  Albert Einstein

  Science, Differences, Simplicity

  Albert Einstein, Stephen W. Hawking (2007). “A Stubbornly Persistent Illusion: The Essential Scientific Works of Albert Einstein”, p.353, Running Press

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• Regarding the Laws of Thermodynamics: "(1) You can't win, (2) you can't break even, and (3) you can't get out of the game.

  Dennis Overbye

  Winning, Law, Games

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• Nothing in life is certain except death, taxes and the second law of thermodynamics. All three are processes in which useful or accessible forms of some quantity, such as energy or money, are transformed into useless, inaccessible forms of the same quantity. That is not to say that these three processes don't have fringe benefits: taxes pay for roads and schools; the second law of thermodynamics drives cars, computers and metabolism; and death, at the very least, opens up tenured faculty positions.

  Seth Lloyd

  School, Law, Car

  Nature 430, 971, August 26, 2004.

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• Thermodynamics, correctly interpreted, does not just allow Darwinian evolution; it favors it.

  Ludwig Boltzmann

  Religion, Atheism, Doe

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• Once I got home, I sulked for a while. All my brilliant plans foiled by thermodynamics. Damn you, Entropy!

  Andy Weir

  Home, Damn You, Brilliant

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• Software is like entropy. It is difficult to grasp, weighs nothing, and obeys the second law of thermodynamics; i.e. it always increases.

  Norman Ralph Augustine

  Science, Law, Literature

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• Fourth Law of Thermodynamics: If the probability of success is not almost one, then it is damn near zero.

  David R. Ellis

  Zero, Law, Damn

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

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• Just like a computer, we must remember things in the order in which entropy increases. This makes the second law of thermodynamics almost trivial. Disorder increases with time because we measure time in the direction in which disorder increases. You can't have a safer bet than that!

  Stephen Hawking

  Order, Law, Remember

  Stephen W. Hawking (1990). “A Brief History of Time: From the Big Bang to Black Holes”, Bantam

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• The laws of thermodynamics restrict all technologies, man's as well as nature's, and apply to all economic systems whether capitalist, communist, socialist, or fascist. We do not create or destroy (produce or consume) anything in a physical sense- we merely transform or rearrange. And the inevitable cost of arranging greater order in one part of the system (the human economy) is creating a more than offsetting amount of disorder elsewhere (the natural environment).

  Herman E. Daly

  Technology, Men, Law

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• The algebraic sum of all the transformations occurring in a cyclical process can only be positive, or, as an extreme case, equal to nothing. Statement of the second law of thermodynamics, 1862

  Rudolf Clausius

  Law, Being Positive, Transformation

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• A good many times I have been present at gatherings of people who, by the standards of the traditional culture, are thought highly educated and who have with considerable gusto been expressing their incredulity at the illiteracy of scientists. Once or twice I have been provoked and have asked the company how many of them could describe the Second Law of Thermodynamics. The response was cold: it was also negative. Yet I was asking something which is about the scientific equivalent of: Have you read a work of Shakespeare's?

  C.P. Snow

  Science, Law, People

  C.P. SNOW (1963). “THE TWO CULTURES: AND A SECOND LOOK”

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• A theory is the more impressive the greater the simplicity of its premises is, the more different kinds of things it relates, and the more extended its area of applicability.

  Albert Einstein

  Theory, Impressive, Premises

  "Albert Einstein: philosopher-scientist". Book by Paul Arthur Schilpp, p. 33, 1949.

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• The laws of thermodynamics may be regarded as particular cases of more general laws, applicable to all such states of matter as constitute Energy , or the capacity to perform work, which more general laws form the basis of the science of energetics, a science comprehending, as special branches, the theories of motion, heat, light , electricity , and all other physical phenomena.

  William John Macquorn Rankine

  Light, Law, Special

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

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• Everybody can be great...because anybody can serve. You don't have to have a college degree to serve. You don't have to make your subject and verb agree to serve. You only need a heart full of grace. A soul generated by love.

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  Love, Inspirational, Marriage

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• If someone points out to you that your pet theory of the universe is in disagreement with Maxwell's equations - then so much the worse for Maxwell's equations. If it is found to be contradicted by observation - well, these experimentalists do bungle things sometimes. But if your theory is found to be against the second law of thermodynamics I can give you no hope; there is nothing for it but to collapse in deepest humiliation.

  Arthur Eddington

  Hope, Science, Errors

  "The Nature of the Physical World" by Arthur Eddington, (Ch. 4), 1928.

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• I know just enough about thermodynamics to understand that if it takes too much fossil-fuel energy to create ethanol, that's a very stupid way to solve an energy problem.

  Charlie Munger

  Stupid, Energy, Fuel

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• To pretend that civilization can exist without destroying its own landbase and the landbases and cultures of others is to be entirely ignorant of history, biology, thermodynamics, morality, and self-preservation.

  Derrick Jensen

  Self, Civilization, Ignorant

  Derrick Jensen (2006). “Endgame”, p.149, Seven Stories Press

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• Bureaucracies temporarily suspend the Second Law of Thermodynamics. In a bureaucracy, it's easier to make a process more complex than to make it simpler, and easier to create a new burden than kill an old one.

  Clay Shirky

  Law, Burden, Easier

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• Everybody can be great, because everybody can serve. [...] You only need a heart full of grace.

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  Heart, Helping Others, Greatness

  "The Drum Major Instinct". Sermon at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, Georgia, February 4, 1968.

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