Popular quotes about Physics! Wisdom and inspiration are here!
I did physics because of my love of nature. As a young student of science, I was taught that physics was the way to learn nature. So my travels through physics really are the same urges that make me travel through ecology.
Vandana ShivaThere does seem to be a sense in which physics has gone beyond what human intuition can understand. We shouldn't be too surprised about that because we're evolved to understand things that move at a medium pace at a medium scale. We can't cope with the very tiny scale of quantum physics or the very large scale of relativity.
Richard DawkinsPhysics is a hobby of mine, as much as a person of limited intelligence can understand physics.
Arthur D. LevinsonBohrโs standpoint, that a space-time description is impossible, I reject a limine. Physics does not consist only of atomic research, science does not consist only of physics, and life does not consist only of science. The aim of atomic research is to fit our empirical knowledge concerning it into our other thinking. All of this other thinking, so far as it concerns the outer world, is active in space and time. If it cannot be fitted into space and time, then it fails in its whole aim and one does not know what purpose it really serves.
Erwin SchrodingerI was a terrible high school student outside of the fact that I did well in physics, but there's a big difference between being good at physics and being a physicist, so I jettisoned that very quickly.
Timothy SimonsI do not think the division of the subject into two parts - into applied mathematics and experimental physics a good one, for natural philosophy without experiment is merely mathematical exercise, while experiment without mathematics will neither sufficiently discipline the mind or sufficiently extend our knowledge in a subject like physics.
Balfour StewartSo, economics should emulate physics' basic ethos, but its search for precision in physics-like formulas is almost always wrong in economics.
Charlie MungerThe fact that the laws of physics don't change as if you move in time has physical implications that there's this thing called energy and energy is conserved, and the same thing - and the fact that the laws of physics don't change of you move back and forth in different directions in space implies that there is something called momentum and momentum is conserve and doesn't change as you evolve in time.
Peter WoitScience Fiction is not just about the future of space ships travelling to other planets, it is fiction based on science and I am using science as my basis for my fiction, but it's the science of prehistory - palaeontology and archaeology - rather than astronomy or physics.
Jean M. AuelThe task of asking nonliving matter to speak and the responsibility for interpreting its reply is that of physics.
Julius Thomas FraserWhy do cats sleep so much? Perhaps they've been trusted with some major cosmic task, an essential law of physics - such as: if there are less than five million cats sleeping at any one time the world will stop spinning.
Kate AtkinsonI didn't leave physics because of boredom. I left it because other issues compelled me in a bigger way. And I always say to myself, "When I'm 60, I'd like to go back to what I interrupted."
Vandana ShivaI quite like the transitions of being an actor, because you get to explore these little pockets of life. So if you're playing a builder you get to know about building, if you're playing a scientist or a physician or something you get to know about physics. And similarly with this world I like exploring their culture, that very sort of upper middle class, addictive... that's part of the reason I love it.
Matt SmithRecent studies have considered the detection of a spaceship visiting our parish of the galaxy. In my opinion that last thought should bring a blush to every human cheek... Fecklessness might be the main theme of the aliens' report on the new-found source of radio pollution ... that emanates from beings who have mastered a lot of physics, chemistry and biology and yet let their children starve-while all around their planet the energy of their mother star runs to waste in a desert of space.
Nigel Calder[Regarding mathematics,] there are now few studies more generally recognized, for good reasons or bad, as profitable and praiseworthy. This may be true; indeed it is probable, since the sensational triumphs of Einstein, that stellar astronomy and atomic physics are the only sciences which stand higher in popular estimation.
G. H. HardyAssessing existence while failing to embrace the insights of modern physics would be like wrestling in the dark with an unknown opponent.
Brian GreeneConsidered as a mere question of physics, (and keeping all moral considerations entirely out of sight,) the appearance of man is a geological phenomenon of vast importance, indirectly modifying the whole surface of the earth, breaking in upon any supposition of zoological continuity, and utterly unaccounted for by what we have any right to call the laws of nature.
Adam SedgwickIn the matter of physics, the first lessons should contain nothing but what is experimental and interesting to see. A pretty experiment is in itself often more valuable than twenty formulae extracted from our minds.
Albert EinsteinThe seemingly insuperable difficulties of deep-space travel suggest an intention to keep us fixed at home in our own solar system, and the physical nature of our part of the Universe, as well as the basic rules of physics and chemistry, have a warning look about them, like barriers designed to isolate intelligent life. This means that for us, unlike the situation for humble microorganisms, deep-space travel is probably a stark impossibility.
Fred HoyleI like science fiction and physics, things like that. Planets being sucked into black holes, and the various vortexes that create possibility, and what happens on the other side of the black hole. To me it's the microcosmic study of the macrocosmic universe in man, and that's why I'm attracted to it.
Wesley SnipesThe creation of Physics is the shared heritage of all mankind. East and West, North and South have equally participated in it.
Abdus SalamIn the 20th century philosophy of time for a great many theorists became part of science because it was time as is studied in physics that became the object of philosophical speculation. That's very different from the way time has normally been understood.
William Lane CraigI have always believed that astrophysics should be the extrapolation of laboratory physics, that we must begin from the present universe and work our way backward to progressively more remote and uncertain epochs.
Hannes AlfvenAt present, when the prevailing forms of society have become hindrances to the free expression of human powers, it is precisely the abstract branches of science, mathematics and theoretical physics, which ... offer a less distorted form of knowledge than other branches of science which are interwoven with the pattern of daily life, and the practicality of which seemingly testifies to their realistic character.
Max HorkheimerAlmost in the same way as earlier physicists are said to have found suddenly that they had too little mathematical understanding to be able to master physics; we may say that young people today are suddenly in the position that ordinary common sense no longer suffices to meet the strange demands life makes. Everything has become so intricate that for its mastery an exceptional degree of understanding is required. For it is not enough any longer to be able to play the game well; but the question is again and again: what sort of game is to be played now anyway?
Ludwig WittgensteinIt is generally recognised that women are better than men at languages, personal relations and multi-tasking, but less good at map-reading and spatial awareness. It is therefore not unreasonable to suppose that women might be less good at mathematics and physics.
Stephen HawkingI myself believe that there will one day be time travel because when we find that something isn't forbidden by the over-arching laws of physics we usually eventually find a technological way of doing it.
David DeutschA pair of legs engineered to defy the laws of physics and a mindset to master the most epic of splits.
Jean-Claude Van DammeScientists, therefore, are responsible for their research, not only intellectually but also morally. This responsibility has become an important issue in many of today's sciences, but especially so in physics, in which the results of quantum mechanics and relativity theory have opened up two very different paths for physicists to pursue. They may lead us - to put it in extreme terms - to the Buddha or to the Bomb, and it is up to each of us to decide which path to take.
Fritjof CapraThanks to the high standing which science has for so long attain and to the impartiality of the Nobel Prize Committee, the Nobel Prize for Physics is rightly considered everywhere as the highest reward within the reach of workers in Natural Philosophy.
Guglielmo MarconiSo great a contribution to physics was Two New Sciences that scholars have long maintained that the book anticipated Isaac Newton's laws of motion.
Stephen HawkingPhysics should represent a reality in time and space, free from spooky action at a distance.
Walter IsaacsonMost of us who become experimental physicists do so for two reasons; we love the tools of physics because to us they have intrinsic beauty, and we dream of finding new secrets of nature as important and as exciting as those uncovered by our scientific heroes. But we walk a narrow path with pitfalls on either side. If we spend all our time developing equipment, we risk the appellation of "plumber," and if we merely use the tools developed by others, we risk the censure of our peers for being parasitic.
Luis Walter AlvarezThe thing about lucid dreams is that it's not like the real world where you are constrained by all sorts of things, including the laws of physics - you can do magic.
Paul DaviesI abandoned chemistry to concentrate on mathematics and physics. In 1942, I travelled to Cambridge to take the scholarship examination at Trinity College, received an award and entered the university in October 1943.
John PopleGood applied science in medicine, as in physics, requires a high degree of certainty about the basic facts at hand, and especially about their meaning, and we have not yet reached this point for most of medicine.
Lewis ThomasLouis Armstrong is quite simply the most important person in American music. He is to 20th century music (I did not say jazz) what Einstein is to physics.
Ken BurnsThe key to teaching anything is to remember what it was like not to understand that thing. That's a very hard thing to do. Every time you come to understand something you didn't understand before, you are transformed. You become a different person from who you were before. The key to teaching someone else to understand that same thing is to remember your former, untransformed self. If you can do that, I think you can teach anything, even physics.
David GoodsteinWhat will be required to increase the quality of life and health is a coming together of technology and values, based on a scientific guiding principle that people can agree on. Securing a healthy global future requires this guiding principle to preserve freedom of spirit yet be as provable as the laws of physics. A guiding principle that addresses the meaning of life and is compelling enough to generate social cohesion and behaviors that serve the greater whole. After thirty years of investigation and research, it has become clear to me that the answer lies within the human heart.
Doc ChildreCould Hamlet have been written by a committee, or the "Mona Lisa" painted by a club? Could the New Testament have been composed as a conference report? Creative ideas do not spring from groups. They spring from individuals. The divine spark leaps from the finger of God to the finger of Adam, whether it takes ultimate shape in a law of physics or a law of the land, a poem or a policy, a sonata or a mechanical computer.
Alfred Whitney GriswoldThe mathematicians of this world regard themselves as 'physicists,' yet they know next to nothing about Physics.
Bill GaedeMy students know I have a life, they know I've written about my life. They know some detail, probably more than they know about their physics teacher, but I would've told them anyway!
Marya HornbacherTheir minds sang with the ecstatic knowledge that either what they were doing was completely and utterly and totally impossible or that physics had a lot of catching up to do.
Douglas AdamsQuantum physics says that there is an infinite number of possibilities and parallels to the one that we know, and every event is also played out in a parallel world. It's kind of a crazy idea, but someone called Saibal Mitra at the University of Amsterdam says that if you could back up your memory in case of a catastrophic event, you could actually revert to that back-up and find an alternative world in which the Earth didn't explode or collide with Mars.
MomusThis is the most important joke I've ever heard. Niels Bohr, the founder of Quantum Physics, had a friend to dinner. As the friend left, he noticed a horseshoe nailed above Bohr's front door. He said to Bohr, accusingly, "Niels, you're a great scientist. You can't believe in superstitions." Bohr answered, "I don't, but apparently it works anyway."As with confirmation bias, we tend to lean toward superstitions that benefit us.
John CleeseNot only in geometry, but to a still more astonishing degree in physics, has it become more and more evident that as soon as we have succeeded in unraveling fully the natural laws which govern reality, we find them to be expressible by mathematical relations of surprising simplicity and architectonic perfection. It seems to me to be one of the chief objects of mathematical instruction to develop the faculty of perceiving this simplicity and harmony.
Hermann Weyl