Quotes by Physicists - Page 26

To make light of philosophy is to be a true philosopher.
Blaise Pascal
The role played by time at the beginning of the universe is, I believe, the final key to removing the need for a Grand Designer, and revealing how the universe created itself. … Time itself must come to a stop. You can’t get to a time before the big bang, because there was no time before the big bang. We have finally found something that does not have a cause because there was no time for a cause to exist in. For me this means there is no possibility of a creator because there is no time for a creator to have existed. Since time itself began at the moment of the Big Bang, it was an event that could not have been caused or created by anyone or anything. … So when people ask me if a god created the universe, I tell them the question itself makes no sense. Time didn’t exist before the Big Bang, so there is no time for God to make the universe in. It’s like asking for directions to the edge of the Earth. The Earth is a sphere. It does not have an edge, so looking for it is a futile exercise.
Stephen Hawking
Nature is pleased with simplicity. And nature is no dummy
Isaac Newton
The Revolution introduced me to art, and in turn, art introduced me to the Revolution!
Albert Einstein
I think it's much more interesting to live not knowing than to have answers which might be wrong. I have approximate answers and possible beliefs and different degrees of uncertainty about different things, but I am not absolutely sure of anything and there are many things I don't know anything about, such as whether it means anything to ask why we're here. I don't have to know an answer. I don't feel frightened not knowing things, by being lost in a mysterious universe without any purpose, which is the way it really is as far as I can tell.
Richard Feynman
I have a friend who's an artist and has sometimes taken a view which I don't agree with very well. He'll hold up a flower and say "look how beautiful it is," and I'll agree. Then he says "I as an artist can see how beautiful this is but you as a scientist take this all apart and it becomes a dull thing," and I think that he's kind of nutty. First of all, the beauty that he sees is available to other people and to me too, I believe. Although I may not be quite as refined aesthetically as he is ... I can appreciate the beauty of a flower. At the same time, I see much more about the flower than he sees. I could imagine the cells in there, the complicated actions inside, which also have a beauty. I mean it's not just beauty at this dimension, at one centimeter; there's also beauty at smaller dimensions, the inner structure, also the processes. The fact that the colors in the flower evolved in order to attract insects to pollinate it is interesting; it means that insects can see the color. It adds a question: does this aesthetic sense also exist in the lower forms? Why is it aesthetic? All kinds of interesting questions which the science knowledge only adds to the excitement, the mystery and the awe of a flower. It only adds. I don't understand how it subtracts.
Richard Feynman
Even if there is only one possible unified theory, it is just a set of rules and equations. What is it that breathes fire into the equations and makes a universe for them to describe? The usual approach of science of constructing a mathematical model cannot answer the questions of why there should be a universe for the model to describe. Why does the universe go to all the bother of existing?
Stephen Hawking
The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is at all comprehensible.
Albert Einstein
The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing.
Albert Einstein
The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle of true art and true science.
Albert Einstein
One, remember to look up at the stars and not down at your feet. Two, never give up work. Work gives you meaning and purpose and life is empty without it. Three, if you are lucky enough to find love, remember it is there and don't throw it away.
Stephen Hawking
A human being is a part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feeling as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.
Albert Einstein
– and pompous fools drive me up the wall. Ordinary fools are alright; you can talk to them and try to help them out. But pompous fools – guys who are fools and covering it all over and impressing people as to how wonderful they are with all this hocus pocus – THAT, I CANNOT STAND! An ordinary fool isn’t a faker; an honest fool is all right. But a dishonest fool is terrible!
Richard Feynman
Well, Mr. Frankel, who started this program, began to suffer from the computer disease that anybody who works with computers now knows about. It's a very serious disease and it interferes completely with the work. The trouble with computers is you *play* with them. They are so wonderful. You have these switches - if it's an even number you do this, if it's an odd number you do that - and pretty soon you can do more and more elaborate things if you are clever enough, on one machine.After a while the whole system broke down. Frankel wasn't paying any attention; he wasn't supervising anybody. The system was going very, very slowly - while he was sitting in a room figuring out how to make one tabulator automatically print arc-tangent X, and then it would start and it would print columns and then bitsi, bitsi, bitsi, and calculate the arc-tangent automatically by integrating as it went along and make a whole table in one operation.Absolutely useless. We *had* tables of arc-tangents. But if you've ever worked with computers, you understand the disease - the *delight* in being able to see how much you can do. But he got the disease for the first time, the poor fellow who invented the thing.
Richard Feynman
I couldn't claim that I was smarter than sixty-five other guys--but the average of sixty-five other guys, certainly!
Richard Feynman
People often think I'm a faker, but I'm usually honest, in a certain way--in such a way that often nobody believes me!
Richard Feynman
There are things that are so serious that you can only joke about them.
Werner Heisenberg
You see, wire telegraph is a kind of a very, very long cat. You pull his tail in New York and his head is meowing in Los Angeles. Do you understand this? And radio operates exactly the same way: you send signals here, they receive them there. The only difference is that there is no cat.
Albert Einstein
The downside of my celebrity is that I cannot go anywhere in the world without being recognized. It is not enough for me to wear dark sunglasses and a wig. The wheelchair gives me away.
Stephen Hawking
An empty stomach is not a good political adviser.
Albert Einstein
I made this [letter] very long, because I did not have the leisure to make it shorter.
Blaise Pascal
Even on the most solemn occasions I got away without wearing socks and hid that lack of civilization in high boots
Albert Einstein
[In the Universe it may be that] Primitive life is very common and intelligent life is fairly rare. Some would say it has yet to occur on Earth.
Stephen Hawking
I have only made this letter longer because I have not had the time to make it shorter.", 1657)
Blaise Pascal
Student: Dr. Einstein, Aren't these the same questions as last year's [physics] final exam?Dr. Einstein: Yes; But this year the answers are different.
Albert Einstein
I never made one of my discoveries through the process of rational thinking
Albert Einstein
Black holes are where God divided by zero.
Albert Einstein
When you are courting a nice girl an hour seems like a second. When you sit on a red-hot cinder a second seems like an hour. That's relativity.
Albert Einstein
Never memorize something that you can look up.
Albert Einstein
It is not the possession of truth, but the success which attends the seeking after it, that enriches the seeker and brings happiness to him.
Max Planck
Life is and will ever remain an equation incapable of solution, but it contains certain known factors.
Nikola Tesla
Great spirits have always encountered opposition from mediocre minds. The mediocre mind is incapable of understanding the man who refuses to bow blindly to conventional prejudices and chooses instead to express his opinions courageously and honestly.
Albert Einstein
Adversity introduces a man to himself.
Albert Einstein
It occurred to me by intuition, and music was the driving force behind that intuition. My discovery was the result of musical perception.
Albert Einstein
We crave for new sensations but soon become indifferent to them. The wonders of yesterday are today common occurrences
Nikola Tesla
Small is the number of them that see with their own eyes and feel with their own hearts.
Albert Einstein
Although I am a typical loner in my daily life, my awareness of belonging to the invisible community of those who strive for truth, beauty, and justice has prevented me from feelings of isolation.
Albert Einstein
It is harder to crack prejudice than an atom.
Albert Einstein
All the time you're saying to yourself, 'I could do that, but I won't,' — which is just another way of saying that you can't.
Richard Feynman
Everything is determined, the beginning as well as the end, by forces over which we have no control. It is determined for the insect, as well as for the star. Human beings, vegetables, or cosmic dust, we all dance to a mysterious tune, intoned in the distance by an invisible piper.
Albert Einstein
God is subtle but he is not malicious.
Albert Einstein
I believe the simplest explanation is, there is no God. No one created the universe and no one directs our fate. This leads me to a profound realization that there probably is no heaven and no afterlife either. We have this one life to appreciate the grand design of the universe and for that, I am extremely grateful.
Stephen Hawking
Intellectual growth should commence at birth and cease only at death.
Albert Einstein
Do not worry about your difficulties in Mathematics. I can assure you mine are still greater.
Albert Einstein
Only those who attempt the absurd can achieve the impossible.
Albert Einstein
Once we accept our limits, we go beyond them.
Albert Einstein
I must be willing to give up what I am in order to become what I will be.
Albert Einstein
Imagination is everything. It is the preview of life's coming attractions.
Albert Einstein
I have never met a man so ignorant that I couldn't learn something from him.
Galileo Galilei
We are just an advanced breed of monkeys on a minor planet of a very average star. But we can understand the Universe. That makes us something very special.
Stephen Hawking
You never fail until you stop trying.
Albert Einstein
I am enough of an artist to draw freely upon my imagination. Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.
Albert Einstein
Lo esperado no sucede. Es lo inesperado lo que acontece.
Ernesto Sabato
Life isn't worth living, unless it is lived for someone else.
Albert Einstein
When people ask me if a god created the universe, I tell them that the question itself makes no sense. Time didn’t exist before the big bang, so there is no time for god to make the universe in. It’s like asking directions to the edge of the earth; The Earth is a sphere; it doesn’t have an edge; so looking for it is a futile exercise. We are each free to believe what we want, and it’s my view that the simplest explanation is; there is no god. No one created our universe,and no one directs our fate. This leads me to a profound realization; There is probably no heaven, and no afterlife either. We have this one life to appreciate the grand design of the universe, and for that I am extremely grateful.
Stephen Hawking
We are the cosmos made conscious and life is the means by which the universe understands itself.
Brian Cox
Dancers are the athletes of God.
Albert Einstein
If people do not believe that mathematics is simple, it is only because they do not realize how complicated life is.
John von Neumann
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 freedom." (first published 1937)]
Albert Einstein
My expectations were reduced to zero when I was 21. Everything since then has been a bonus.", December 12, 2004)]
Stephen Hawking