Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Long may Louis de Broglie continue to inspire those who suspect that what is proved by impossibility proofs is lack of imagination.
Some proofs command assent. Others woo and charm the intellect. They evoke delight and an overpowering desire to say, 'Amen, Amen'.
There is a maxim about the universe which I always tell my students: That which is not explicitly forbidden is guaranteed to occur.
We know that the expansion of our universe is accelerating, which means a number called the cosmological constant must be positive.
Whence come I and whither go I? That is the great unfathomable question, the same for every one of us. Science has no answer to it.
[T]he yeoman's work in any science, and especially physics, is done by the experimentalist, who must keep the theoreticians honest.
An independant reality in the ordinary physical sense can neither be ascribed to the phenomenon nor to the agencies of observation.
I don't believe in honors - it bothers me. Honors bother: honors is epaulettes; honors is uniforms. My papa brought me up this way.
I have certainly enjoyed puzzles since an early age, and things that look like impossible things are often particularly intriguing.
The experience of being in space didn't change my perspective of myself or of the planet or of life. I had no spiritual experience.
Literally as well as metaphorically, the man accustomed to inverting lenses has undergone a revolutionary transformation of vision.
In some sense man is a microcosm of the universe; therefore what man is, is a clue to the universe. We are enfolded in the universe.
The future cannot be predicted, but futures can be invented. It was man's ability to invent which has made human society what it is.
Quantum mechanics brought an unexpected fuzziness into physics because of quantum uncertainty, the Heisenberg uncertainty principle.
The task is not to see what has never been seen before, but to think what has never been thought before about what you see everyday.
What I thought was unreal now, for me, seems in some ways to be more real than what I think to be real, which seems now to be unreal
You had to be able to lift yourself outside of the time stream - and that essentially became what is called the yoga of time travel.
I did not imagine that the second half of my life would be spent on efforts to avert a mortal danger to humanity created by science.
The time has come to formulate guidelines for the ethical conduct of scientist, perhaps in the form of a voluntary Hippocratic Oath.
At the heart of quantum mechanics is a rule that sometimes governs politicians or CEOs-as long as no one is watching, anything goes.
I love physics with all my heart ... It is a kind of personal love, as one has for a person to whom one is grateful for many things.
When searching for harmony in life one must never forget that in the drama of existence we are ourselves both actors and spectators.
It's always good in science to say "Well how do you know that?" and "Are you really sure?" and "Could there be an exceptional case?"
Doubt is clearly a value in science. It is important to doubt and that the doubt is not a fearful thing, but a thing of great value.
Science is a process for learning about nature in which competing ideas about how the world works are measured against observations.
If you know that you are not sure, you have a chance to improve the situation. I want to demand this freedom for future generations.
While I am describing to you how Nature works, you won't understand why Nature works that way. But you see, nobody understands that.
Were it not for gravity one man might hurl another by a puff of his breath into the depths of space, beyond recall for all eternity.
Observations indicate that the universe is expanding at an ever increasing rate. It will expand forever, getting emptier and darker.
I have found far greater enthusiasm for science in America than here in Britain. There is more enthusiasm for everything in America.
I liked quantum mechanics very much. The subject was hard to understand but easy to apply to a large number of interesting problems.
Despite its name, the big bang theory is not really a theory of a bang at all. It is really only a theory of the aftermath of a bang.
I'm a practitioner of elegant frugality. I don't feel comfortable telling other people what to do, so I just try and lead by example.
The world is just - it's wonderful when you look at all the detail. It's just amazing. Nothing is boring if you look at it carefully.
In modern physics, the universe is experienced as a dynamic inseparable whole which always includes the observer in an essential way.
I have explained the phenomena of the heavens and of our sea by the force of gravity, but I have not yet assigned a cause to gravity.
The Nobel awards should be regarded as giving recognition to this general scientific progress as well as to the individuals involved.
The hardest problems of pure and applied science can only be solved by the open collaboration of the world-wide scientific community.
In subjects that physicists think of as purely quantum, classical ideas and classical computational techniques can often be powerful.
The illusion of purpose and design is perhaps the most pervasive illusion about nature that science has to confront on a daily basis.
Metaphysical speculation is independent of the physical validity of the Big Bang itself and is irrelevant to our understanding of it.
By no definition of any modern scientist is intelligent design science, and it's a waste of our students' time to subject them to it.
General relativity predicts that time ends inside black holes because the gravitational collapse squeezes matter to infinite density.
One thing that feeds into the way you experience the social world is your mood - and one thing that affects your mood is the weather.
We all know that looks matter, and modern politicians have always assumed that their battles are decided on both substance and image.
Do not imagine that mathematics is hard and crabbed, and repulsive to common sense. It is merely the etherealization of common sense.
If we are honest - and scientists have to be - we must admit that religion is a jumble of false assertions, with no basis in reality.
To say that climate change will be catastrophic hides a cascade of value-laden assumptions that do not emerge from empirical science.
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.
There's something called From 'Alchemy to Quarks,' which will teach you everything you have to know, you want to know, about physics.