Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
It doesn't matter how beautiful your theory is, it doesn't matter how smart you are. If it doesn't agree with experiment, it's wrong.
If an apple was magnified to the size of the Earth, then the atoms in the apple would be approximately the size of the original apple.
It is scientific only to say what is more likely and what less likely, and not to be proving all the time the possible and impossible.
Einstein was a giant. His head was in the clouds, but his feet were on the ground. But those of us who are not that tall have to choose!
The problem of creating something new, but which is consistent with everything which has been seen before, is one of extreme difficulty.
I wanted very much to learn to draw, for a reason that I kept to myself: I wanted to convey an emotion I have about the beauty of the world.
It is necessary for the very existence of science that minds exist which do not allow that nature must satisfy some preconceived conditions.
Some things that satisfy the rules of algebra can be interesting to mathematicians even though they don't always represent a real situation.
Europeans are much more serious than we are in America because they think that a good place to discuss intellectual matters is a beer party.
It is necessary to look at the results of observation objectively, because you, the experimenter, might like one result better than another.
Scientific knowledge is a body of statements of varying degrees of certainty -- some most unsure, some nearly sure, none absolutely certain.
Today we say that the law of relativity is supposed to be true at all energies, but someday somebody may come along and say how stupid we were.
If you have any talent, or any occupation that delights you, do it, and do it to the hilt. Don't ask why, or what difficulties you may get into.
It's because somebody knows something about it that we can't talk about physics. It's the things that nobody knows anything about we can discuss.
We can deduce, often, from one part of physics like the law of gravitation, a principle which turns out to be much more valid than the derivation.
Nature uses only the longest threads to weave her patterns, so that each small piece of her fabric reveals the organization of the entire tapestry.
For those who want some proof that physicists are human, the proof is in the idiocy of all the different units which they use for measuring energy.
Light is something like raindrops each little lump of light is called a photon and if the light is all one color, all the "raindrops" are the same.
I think a power to do something is of value. Whether the result is a good thing or a bad thing depends on how it is used, but the power is a value.
There is one simplification at least. Electrons behave ... in exactly the same way as photons; they are both screwy, but in exactly in the same way.
There are all kinds of interesting questions that come from a knowledge of science, which only adds to the excitement and mystery and awe of a flower.
First figure out why you want the students to learn the subject and what you want them to know, and the method will result more or less by common sense.
A philosopher once said, 'It is necessary for the very existence of science that the same conditions always produce the same results.' Well, they don't!
Philosophers say a great deal about what is absolutely necessary for science, and it is always, so far as one can see, rather naive, and probably wrong.
The internal machinery of life, the chemistry of the parts, is something beautiful. And it turns out that all life is interconnected with all other life.
The universe is very large, and its boundaries are not known very well, but it is still possible to define some kind of a radius to be associated with it.
Have no respect whatsoever for authority; forget who said it and instead look what he starts with, where he ends up, and ask yourself, "Is it reasonable?"
In fact the total amount that a physicist knows is very little. He has only to remember the rules to get him from one place to another and he is all right.
There is nothing that living things do that cannot be understood from the point of view that they are made of atoms acting according to the laws of physics.
The ideas associated with the problems of the development of science, as far as I can see by looking around me, are not of the kind that everyone appreciates.
We seem gradually to be groping toward an understanding of the world of subatomic particles, but we really do not know how far we have yet to go in this task.
Strange! I don't understand how it is that we can write mathematical expressions and calculate what the thing is going to do without being able to picture it.
Start out understanding religion by saying everything is possibly wrong... As soon as you do that, you start sliding down an edge which is hard to recover from.
I don't understand what it's all about or what's worth what, but if the people in the Swedish Academy decide that x, y or z wins the Nobel Prize, then so be it.
One cannot understand... the universality of laws of nature, the relationship of things, without an understanding of mathematics. There is no other way to do it.
The theoretical broadening which comes from having many humanities subjects on the campus is offset by the general dopiness of the people who study these things.
Nobody ever figures out what life is all about, and it doesn't matter. Explore the world. Nearly everything is really interesting if you go into it deeply enough.
I don't know what's the matter with people: they don't learn by understanding, they learn by some other way — by rote or something. Their knowledge is so fragile!
Our imagination is stretched to the utmost, not, as in fiction, to imagine things which are not really there, but just to comprehend those things which are there.
I don't know what's the matter with people: they don't learn by understanding; they learn by some other way - by rote, or something. Their knowledge is so fragile!
If there is something very slightly wrong in our definition of the theories, then the full mathematical rigor may convert these errors into ridiculous conclusions.
I got a fancy reputation. During high school, every puzzle that was known to man must have come to me. Every damn, crazy conundrum that people had invented, I knew.
Every instrument that has been designed to be sensitive enough to detect weak light has always ended up discovering that the same thing: light is made of particles.
We scientists are clever — too clever — are you not satisfied? Is four square miles in one bomb not enough? Men are still thinking. Just tell us how big you want it!
From a long view of the history of mankind the most significant event of the nineteenth century will be judged as Maxwell's discovery of the laws of electrodynamics.
Science alone of all the subjects contains within itself the lesson of the danger of belief in the infallibility of the greatest teachers of the preceding generation.
To guess what to keep and what to throw away takes considerable skill. Actually it is probably merely a matter of luck, but it looks as if it takes considerable skill.
There are thousands of years in the past, and there is an unknown amount of time in the future. There are all kinds of opportunities, and there are all kinds of dangers.
Everybody who reasons carefully about anything is making a contribution ... and if you abstract it away and send it to the Department of Mathematics they put it in books.
One does not, by knowing all the physical laws as we know them today, immediately obtain an understanding of anything much. I love only nature, and I hate mathematicians.