Quotes by Physicists - Page 16

You can't fool nature.
Richard Feynman
Civilization was a defense against nature’s raw power.
Gregory Benford
We have yet to encounter an observable astronomical phenomenon that require a supernatural element to be added to a model in order to describe the even...Observations in cosmology look just as they can be expected to look if there is no God.
Victor J. Stenger
Rather than being handed down from above, like the Ten Commandments, they [the laws of physics] look exactly as they should look if they were not handed down from anywhere...they follow from the very lack of structure at the earliest moment.
Victor J. Stenger
Take this neat little equation here. It tells me all the ways an electron can make itself comfortable in or around an atom. That's the logic of it. The poetry of it is that the equation tells me how shiny gold is, how come rocks are hard, what makes grass green, and why you can't see the wind. And a million other things besides, about the way nature works.
Richard Feynman
All things can be deadly to us, even the things made to serve us; as in nature walls can kill us, and stairs can kill us, if we do not walk circumspectly.
Blaise Pascal
Historically, nature has been very good at surprising us.
Sean Carroll
Those honor nature well, who teach that she can speak on everything.
Blaise Pascal
Nature has made all her truths independent of one another. Our art makes one dependent on the other.
Blaise Pascal
I think nature's imagination Is so much greater than man's, she's never going to let us relax
Richard Feynman
The owner of the means of production is in a position to purchase the labor power of the worker. By using the means of production, the worker produces new goods which become the property of the capitalist. The essential point about this process is the relation between what the worker produces and what he is paid, both measured in terms of real value. Insofar as the labor contract is "free," what the worker receives is determined not by the real value of the goods he produces, but by his minimum needs and by the capitalists' requirements for labor power in relation to the number of workers competing for jobs. It is important to understand that even in theory the payment of the worker is not determined by the value of his product.
Albert Einstein
Bureaucracy is the death of all sound work.
Albert Einstein
Out of clutter, find simplicity.
Albert Einstein
There should be no boundaries to human endeavor. (...) However bad life may seem (...) While there’s life, there is hope.
Stephen Hawking
Lust is the source of all our actions, and humanity.
Blaise Pascal
The expression 'there is nothing like the good old days' does not mean that fewer bad things happened before, but fortunately, that people tend to forget about them.
Ernesto Sabato
Mark Twain once said that history doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme.
Albert-László Barabási
The technologies which have had the most profound effects on human life are usually simple. A good example of a simple technology with profound historical consequences is hay. Nobody knows who invented hay, the idea of cutting grass in the autumn and storing it in large enough quantities to keep horses and cows alive through the winter. All we know is that the technology of hay was unknown to the Roman Empire but was known to every village of medieval Europe. Like many other crucially important technologies, hay emerged anonymously during the so-called Dark Ages. According to the Hay Theory of History, the invention of hay was the decisive event which moved the center of gravity of urban civilization from the Mediterranean basin to Northern and Western Europe. The Roman Empire did not need hay because in a Mediterranean climate the grass grows well enough in winter for animals to graze. North of the Alps, great cities dependent on horses and oxen for motive power could not exist without hay. So it was hay that allowed populations to grow and civilizations to flourish among the forests of Northern Europe. Hay moved the greatness of Rome to Paris and London, and later to Berlin and Moscow and New York.
Freeman Dyson
Mark Twain once said that history doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme.
Albert-László Barabási
The technologies which have had the most profound effects on human life are usually simple. A good example of a simple technology with profound historical consequences is hay. Nobody knows who invented hay, the idea of cutting grass in the autumn and storing it in large enough quantities to keep horses and cows alive through the winter. All we know is that the technology of hay was unknown to the Roman Empire but was known to every village of medieval Europe. Like many other crucially important technologies, hay emerged anonymously during the so-called Dark Ages. According to the Hay Theory of History, the invention of hay was the decisive event which moved the center of gravity of urban civilization from the Mediterranean basin to Northern and Western Europe. The Roman Empire did not need hay because in a Mediterranean climate the grass grows well enough in winter for animals to graze. North of the Alps, great cities dependent on horses and oxen for motive power could not exist without hay. So it was hay that allowed populations to grow and civilizations to flourish among the forests of Northern Europe. Hay moved the greatness of Rome to Paris and London, and later to Berlin and Moscow and New York.
Freeman Dyson
Intelligence is the ability to adapt to change
Stephen Hawking
Great spirits have always found violent opposition from mediocrities. The latter cannot understand it when a man does not thoughtlessly submit to hereditary prejudices but honestly and courageously uses his intelligence
Albert Einstein
Stay away from negative people. They have a problem for every solution.
Albert Einstein
It used to be obvious that the world was designed by some sort of intelligence. What else could account for fire and rain and lightning and earthquakes? Above all, the wonderful abilities of living things seemed to point to a creator who had a special interest in life. Today we understand most of these things in terms of physical forces acting under impersonal laws. We don't yet know the most fundamental laws, and we can't work out all the consequences of the laws we do know. The human mind remains extraordinarily difficult to understand, but so is the weather. We can't predict whether it will rain one month from today, but we do know the rules that govern the rain, even though we can't always calculate their consequences. I see nothing about the human mind any more than about the weather that stands out as beyond the hope of understanding as a consequence of impersonal laws acting over billions of years.
Steven Weinberg
I would prefer an intelligent hell to a stupid paradise.
Blaise Pascal
Be less curious about people and more curious about ideas.
Marie Curie
Gender imbalance is, at its root, a collective spiritual crisis.
William Keepin
When we read too fast or too slowly, we understand nothing.
Blaise Pascal
Somebody who only reads newspapers and at best books of contemporary authors looks to me like an extremely near-sighted person who scorns eyeglasses. He is completely dependent on the prejudices and fashions of his times, since he never gets to see or hear anything else.
Albert Einstein
Patterns cannot be weighed or measured. Patterns must be mapped.
Fritjof Capra
It is a beautiful and delightful sight to behold the body of the Moon.
Galileo Galilei
There is a certain standard of grace and beauty which consists in a certain relation between our nature... and the thing which pleases us.
Blaise Pascal
Our task must be to free ourselves... by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature and it's beauty.
Albert Einstein
From the systems point of view, it is evident that one of the main obstacles to organizational change is the — largely unconscious — embrace by business leaders of the mechanistic approach to management.
Fritjof Capra
She emptied herself of Fabio and of herself, of all the useless efforts she had made to get where she was and find nothing there. With detached curiosity she observed the rebirth of her weaknesses, her obsessions. This time she would let them decide, since she hadn't been able to do anything anyway. Against certain parts of yourself you remain powerless, she said to herself, as she regressed pleasurably to the time when she was a girl.
Paolo Giordano
Give me but a firm spot on which to stand, and I shall move the earth.
Archimedes
The world as we have created it is a process of our thinking. It cannot be changed without changing our thinking.
Albert Einstein
But a lady forced is never a lady won
Gregory Benford
the real purpose of socialism is precisely to overcome and advance beyond the predatory phase of human development
Albert Einstein
Under capitalism, man exploits man. Under communism, is the reverse.
Gregory Benford
All of us who are concerned for peace and triumph of reason and justice must be keenly aware how small an influence reason and honest good will exert upon events in the political field.
Albert Einstein
There's a limit beyond which one cannot progress. The differences between the limiting abilities of those on successively higher steps of the pyramid are enormous. I have not seen described anywhere the shock a talented man experiences when he finds, late in his academic life, that there are others enormously more talented than he. I have personally seen more tears shed by grown men and women over this discovery than I would have believed possible.
Luis W. Alvarez
There is nothing we can now call our own, for what we call so is the effect of art; crimes are made by decrees of the senate, or by the votes of the people; and as here-to-fore we are burdened by vices, so now we are oppressed by laws.
Blaise Pascal
All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.
Blaise Pascal
The possibility for such collective healing holds tremendous transformative power that remains as yet untapped. It is difficult for people to imagine the freedom and energy that would be released if our society were to seriously embrace this task of collective gender healing in community.
William Keepin
Honestly, I cannot understand what people mean when they talk about the freedom of the human will. I have a feeling, for instance, that I will something or other; but what relation this has with freedom I cannot understand at all. I feel that I will to light my pipe and I do it; but how can I connect this up with the idea of freedom? What is behind the act of willing to light the pipe? Another act of willing? Schopenhauer once said: Der Mensch kann was er will; er kann aber nicht wollen was er will (Man can do what he will but he cannot will what he wills).
Albert Einstein
The strength of the Constitution lies entirely in the determination of each citizen to defend it. Only if every single citizen feels duty bound to do his share in this defense are the constitutional rights secure.
Albert Einstein
United States: the country where liberty is a statue.
Nicanor Parra
All religions, arts and sciences are branches of the same tree. All these aspirations are directed toward ennobling man's life, lifting it from the sphere of mere physical existence and leading the individual towards fre
Albert Einstein
The true value of a human being can be found in the degree to which he has attained liberation from the self.
Albert Einstein
In no other type of warfare does the advantage lie so heavily with the aggressor.
James Franck
This topic brings me to that worst outcrop of herd life, the military system, which I abhor... This plague-spot of civilization ought to be abolished with all possible speed. Heroism on command, senseless violence, and all the loathsome nonsense that goes by the name of patriotism -- how passionately I hate them!
Albert Einstein
If I had known they were going to do this, I would have become a shoemaker.
Albert Einstein
He who joyfully marches to music rank and file has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would surely suffice. This disgrace to civilization should be done away with at once. Heroism at command, senseless brutality, deplorable love-of-country stance and all the loathsome nonsense that goes by the name of patriotism, how violently I hate all this, how despicable and ignoble war is; I would rather be torn to shreds than be part of so base an action! It is my conviction that killing under the cloak of war is nothing but an act of murder.
Albert Einstein
Strange is our situation here upon earth. Each of us comes for a short visit, not knowing why, yet sometimes seeming to a divine purpose. From the standpoint of daily life, however, there is one thing we do know: That we are here for the sake of other men —above all for those upon whose smile and well-being our own happiness depends, for the countless unknown souls with whose fate we are connected by a bond of sympathy. Many times a day, I realize how much my outer and inner life is built upon the labors of people, both living and dead, and how earnestly I must exert myself in order to give in return as much as I have received and am still receiving.
Albert Einstein
The world is a dangerous place to live, not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don't do anything about it.
Albert Einstein
I love Humanity but I hate humans
Albert Einstein
Few friendships would survive if each one knew what his friend says of him behind his back
Blaise Pascal
However rare true love may be, it is less so than true friendship.
Albert Einstein
The value of a man should be seen in what he gives and not in what he is able to receive
Albert Einstein