Quotes by Physicists - Page 23

A human being is a part of the whole, called by us "Universe", a part limited in time and space.
Albert Einstein
There are only certain intervals of time when life of any sort is possible in an expanding universe and we can practise astronomy only during that habitable time interval in cosmic history.
John D. Barrow
It's the right idea, but not the right time.
John Dalton
But what is the past? Could it be, the firmness of the past is just illusion? Could the past be a kaleidoscope, a pattern of images that shift with each disturbance of a sudden breeze, a laugh, a thought? And if the shift is everywhere, how would we know?
Alan Lightman
While people brood, time skips ahead without looking back.
Alan Lightman
Creativity is the residue of time wasted.
Albert Einstein
Time is the clarity for seeing right and wrong.
Alan Lightman
Each time is true, but the truths are not the same.
Alan Lightman
Each person who gets stuck in time gets stuck alone.
Alan Lightman
Time is an illusion.
Albert Einstein
the only thing that you absolutely have to know, is the location of the library.
Einstein Albert
If you don’t make mistakes, you’re not working on hard enough problems
Frank Wilczek
I was taught that the way of progress is neither swift nor easy.
Marie Curie
Remember to look up at the stars and not down at your feet. Try to make sense of what you see and wonder about what makes the universe exist. Be curious. And however difficult life may seem, there is always something you can do and succeed at. It matters that you don't just give up.
Stephen Hawking
Once again, the world seems to be less about objects than about interactive relationships.
Carlo Rovelli
I could now see her the way she actually is and not in the distorted way my mind presented her to me when I was trying to find a reason to reject her and move on
Jack Weyland
But without deeper reflection one knows from daily life that one exists for other people--first of all for those upon whose smiles and well-being our own happiness is wholly dependent, and then for the many, unknown to us, to whose destinies we are bound by the ties of sympathy.
Albert Einstein
Everything has changed. . . except the way we think. The aim [of education] must be the training of independently acting and thinking individuals, who, however, see in the service of community their highest life problems
Albert Einstein
My mother made me a scientist without ever intending to. Every other Jewish mother in Brooklyn would ask her child after school: So? Did you learn anything today? But not my mother. “Izzy,” she would say, “did you ask a good question today?” That difference — asking good questions — made me become a scientist.
Isidor Isaac Rabi
Education is not the learning of facts, but the training of the mind to think
Albert Einstein
It is a very grave mistake to think that the enjoyment of seeing and searching can be promoted by means of coercion and a sense of duty. To the contrary, I believe it would be possible to rob even a healthy beast of prey of its voraciousness, if it were possible, with the aid of a whip, to force the beast to devour continuously, even when not hungry.
Albert Einstein
Combinatory play seems to be the essential feature in productive thought.
Albert Einstein
Teaching should be such that what is offered is perceived as a valuable gift and not as hard duty. Never regard study as duty but as the enviable opportunity to learn to know the liberating influence of beauty in the realm of the spirit for your own personal joy and to the profit of the community to which your later work belongs.
Albert Einstein
We must be careful not to discourage our twelve-year-olds by making them waste the best years of their lives preparing for examinations.
Freeman Dyson
Play is the highest form of research.
Albert Einstein
It is, in fact, nothing short of a miracle that the modern methods of instruction have not yet entirely strangled the holy curiosity of inquiry; for this delicate little plant, aside from stimulation, stands mainly in need of freedom. Without this it goes to wrack and ruin without fail.
Albert Einstein
You can know the name of a bird in all the languages of the world, but when you're finished, you'll know absolutely nothing whatever about the bird... So let's look at the bird and see what it's doing -- that's what counts.
Richard Feynman
If I have succeeded better than many who surround me, it has been chiefly - may I say almost solely - from universal assiduity.
John Dalton
Strive not to be a success, but rather to be of value.
Albert Einstein
Possessions, outward success, publicity, luxury - to me these have always been contemptible. I believe that a simple and unassuming manner of life is best for everyone, best for both the body and the mind.
Albert Einstein
Try not to become a man of success. Rather become a man of value.
Albert Einstein
If A is a success in life, then A equals x plus y plus z. Work is x; y is play; and z is keeping your mouth shut
Albert Einstein
The God of the gaps argument for God fails when a plausible scientific account for a gap in current knowledge can be given. I do not dispute that the exact nature of the origin of the universe remains a gap in scientific knowledge. But I deny that we are bereft of any conceivable way to account for that origin scientifically.
Victor J. Stenger
What does what we know or don't know have to do with the laws that govern the world?
Carlo Rovelli
Here, on the edge of what we know, in contact with the ocean of the unknown, shines the mystery and beauty of the world. And it’s breathtaking.
Carlo Rovelli
How you get to know is what I want to know.
Richard Feynman
Wisom is inseparable from knowledge; it is knowledge plus a quality which is within the human being. Without it, knowledge is dry, almost unfit for human consumption, and dangerous to application.
Isidor Rabi
We have inherited from our forefathers the keen longing for unified, all-embracing knowledge.
Erwin Schrödinger
In some sort of crude sense, which no vulgarity, no humor, no overstatement can quite extinguish, the physicists have known sin; and this is a knowledge which they cannot lose.
J. Robert Oppenheimer
the problem of a worker in today’s knowledge industry is not the scarcity of information but its excess. … In order to learn anything, we need time. And to make time we must use information filters allowing us to ignore most of the information aimed at us. We must ignore much to learn a little.
philosopher Mario Bunge
The widespread success of science is too significantan issue to be treated as if it were a happy accident that we arefree to enjoy without enquiring more deeply into why this isthe case. Critical realist achievements of this kind cannot be amatter of logical generality, something that one would expectto be attainable in all possible worlds. Rather, they are an ex-perientially confirmed aspect of the particularity of the worldin which we live and of the kind of beings that we are. Achiev-ing scientific success is a specific ability possessed by human-kind, exercised in the kind of universe that we inhabit. I believethat a full understanding of this remarkable human capacityfor scientific discovery ultimately requires the insight that ourpower in this respect is the gift of the universe’s Creator who,in that ancient and powerful phrase, has made humanity in theimage of God (Genesis 1:26–27).
John Polkinghorne
Where the senses fail us, reason must step in.
Galileo Galilei
Maybe knowledge is as fundamental, or even more fundamental than [material] reality.
Anton Zeilinger
The phaenomena afforded by trades, are a part of the history of nature, and therefore may both challenge the naturalist's curiosity and add to his knowledge, Nor will it suffice to justify learned men in the neglect and contempt of this part of natural history, that the men, from whom it must be learned, are illiterate mechanicks... is indeed childish, and too unworthy of a philosopher, to be worthy of an honest answer.
Robert Boyle
By the time of the arrival of Islam in the early seventeenth century CE, what we now call the Middle East was divided between the Persian and Byzantine empires. But with the spread of this new religion from Arabia, a powerful empire emerged, and with it a flourishing civilization and a glorious golden age.Given how far back it stretches in time, the history of the region -- and even of Iraq itself -- is too big a canvas for me to paint. Instead, what I hope to do in this book is take on the nonetheless ambitious task of sharing with you a remarkable story; one of an age in which great geniuses pushed the frontiers of knowledge to such an extent that their work shaped civilizations to this day.
Jim Al-Khalili
We absolutely must leave room for doubt or there is no progress and there is no learning. There is no learning without having to pose a question. And a question requires doubt. People search for certainty. But there is no certainty. People are terrified — how can you live and not know? It is not odd at all. You only think you know, as a matter of fact. And most of your actions are based on incomplete knowledge and you really don't know what it is all about, or what the purpose of the world is, or know a great deal of other things. It is possible to live and not know.
Richard Feynman
Life, just like the stars, the planets and the galaxies, is just a temporary structure on the long road from order to disorder. But that doesn't make us insignificant, because we are the Cosmos made conscious. Life is the means by which the universe understands itself. And for me, our true significance lies in our ability to understand and explore this beautiful universe.
Brian Cox
Thus, by science I mean, first of all, a worldview giving primacy to reason and observation and a methodology aimed at acquiring accurate knowledge of the natural and social world. This methodology is characterized, above all else, by the critical spirit: namely, the commitment to the incessant testing of assertions through observations and/or experiments — the more stringent the tests, the better — and to revising or discarding those theories that fail the test. One corollary of the critical spirit is fallibilism: namely, the understanding that all our empirical knowledge is tentative, incomplete and open to revision in the light of new evidence or cogent new arguments (though, of course, the most well-established aspects of scientific knowledge are unlikely to be discarded entirely).. . . I stress that my use of the term 'science' is not limited to the natural sciences, but includes investigations aimed at acquiring accurate knowledge of factual matters relating to any aspect of the world by using rational empirical methods analogous to those employed in the natural sciences. (Please note the limitation to questions of fact. I intentionally exclude from my purview questions of ethics, aesthetics, ultimate purpose, and so forth.) Thus, 'science' (as I use the term) is routinely practiced not only by physicists, chemists and biologists, but also by historians, detectives, plumbers and indeed all human beings in (some aspects of) our daily lives. (Of course, the fact that we all practice science from time to time does not mean that we all practice it equally well, or that we practice it equally well in all areas of our lives.)
Alan Sokal
Science is what we have learned about how to keep from fooling ourselves.
Richard Feynman
We live on an island surrounded by a sea of ignorance. As our island of knowledge grows, so does the shore of our ignorance.
John Archibald Wheeler
I believe that we do not know anything for certain, but everything probably.
Christiaan Huygens
Curiosity is more important than knowledge.
Albert Einstein
Since we cannot know all there is to be known about anything, we ought to know a little about everything.
Blaise Pascal
As our circle of knowledge expands, so does the circumference of darkness surrounding it.
Albert Einstein
If a person holds no ambitions in this world, he suffers unknowingly. If a person holds ambitions, he suffers knowingly, but very slowly.
Alan Lightman
An expert is someone who knows some of the worst mistakes that can be made in his subject, and how to avoid them.
Werner Heisenberg
I believe in intuition and inspiration. Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited, whereas imagination embraces the entire world, stimulating progress, giving birth to evolution. It is, strictly speaking, a real factor in scientific research.
Albert Einstein
We are at the very beginning of time for the human race. It is not unreasonable that we grapple with problems. But there are tens of thousands of years in the future. Our responsibility is to do what we can, learn what we can, improve the solutions, and pass them on.
Richard Feynman
Information is not knowledge.
Albert Einstein
Few people are capable of expressing with equanimity opinions which differ from the prejudices of their social enviroment. Most people are incapable of forming such opinions.", 1953)
Albert Einstein