Top 50 Arthur Eddington Quotes
#2. The helium which we handle must have been put together at some time and some place. We do not argue with the critic who urges that the stars are not hot enough for this process; we tell him to go and find a hotter place.
Arthur Eddington
#3. So far as physics is concerned, time's arrow is a property of entropy alone.
Arthur Eddington
#4. It is also a good rule not to put overmuch confidence in the observational results that are put forward until they are confirmed by theory.
Arthur Eddington
#5. The quest of the absolute leads into the four-dimensional world.
Arthur Eddington
#6. We have found a strange footprint on the shores of the unknown.
Arthur Eddington
#7. In Einstein's theory of relativity the observer is a man who sets out in quest of truth armed with a measuring-rod. In quantum theory he sets out with a sieve.
Arthur Eddington
#8. Every body continues in its state of rest or uniform motion in a straight line, except insofar as it doesn't.
Arthur Eddington
#9. I ask you to look both ways. For the road to a knowledge of the stars leads through the atom; and important knowledge of the atom has been reached through the stars.
Arthur Eddington
#10. Oh leave the Wise our measures to collate. One thing at least is certain, light has weight. One thing is certain and the rest debate. Light rays, when near the Sun, do not go straight.
Arthur Eddington
#11. An electron is no more (and no less) hypothetical than a star. Nowadays we count electrons one by one in a Geiger counter, as we count the stars one by one on a photographic plate.
Arthur Eddington
#13. Probably the simplest hypothesis ... is that there may be a slow process of annihilation of matter.
Arthur Eddington
#14. Our ultimate analysis of space leads us not to a "here" and a "there," but to an extension such as that which relates "here" and "there." To put the conclusion rather crudely-space is not a lot of points close together; it is a lot of distances interlocked.
Arthur Eddington
#15. In any attempt to bridge the domains of experience belonging to the spiritual and physical sides of nature, time occupies the key position.
Arthur Eddington
#16. I don't believe any experiment until it is confirmed by theory. I find this is a witty inversion of "conventional" wisdom.
Arthur Eddington
#17. You cannot disturb the tiniest petal of a flower without the troubling of a distant star.
Arthur Eddington
#18. [When thinking about the new relativity and quantum theories] I have felt a homesickness for the paths of physical science where there are ore or less discernible handrails to keep us from the worst morasses of foolishness.
Arthur Eddington
#19. There once was a brainy baboon,
Who always breathed down a bassoon,
For he said, It appears
That in billions of years
I shall certainly hit on a tune.
Arthur Eddington
#20. The idea of a universal mind or Logos would be, I think, a fairly plausible inference from the present state of scientific theory.
Arthur Eddington
#21. It is sound judgment to hope that in the not too distant future we shall be competent to understand so simple a thing as a star.
Arthur Eddington
#22. Proof is an idol before which the mathematician tortures himself.
Arthur Eddington
#23. Events do not happen; they are just there, and we come across them.
Arthur Eddington
#24. Don't believe the results of experiments until they're confirmed by theory.
Arthur Eddington
#25. On one occasion when [William] Smart found him engrossed with his fundamental theory, he asked Eddington how many people he thought would understand what he was writing-after a pause came the reply, 'Perhaps seven.'
Arthur Eddington
#26. Something unknown is doing we don't know what-that is what our theory amounts to.
Arthur Eddington
#27. It is a primitive form of thought that things exist or do not exist.
Arthur Eddington
#28. Life would be stunted and narrow if we could feel no significance in the world around us beyond that which can be weighed and measured with the tools of the physicist or described by the metrical symbols of the mathematician.
Arthur Eddington
#29. What we makes of the world must be largely dependent on the sense-organs that we happen to possess. How the world must have changed since the man came to rely on his eyes rather than his nose.
Arthur Eddington
#30. Human life is proverbially uncertain; few things are more certain than the solvency of a life-insurance company.
Arthur Eddington
#31. In the most modern theories of physics probability seems to have replaced aether as "the nominative of the verb 'to undulate'."
Arthur Eddington
#32. There is no space without aether, and no aether which does not occupy space.
Arthur Eddington
#33. Philosophically, the notion of a beginning of the present order of Nature is repugnant to me ... I should like to find a genuine loophole.
Arthur Eddington
#34. A hundred thousand million Stars make one Galaxy; A hundred thousand million Galaxies make one Universe. The figures may not be very trustworthy, but I think they give a correct impression.
Arthur Eddington
#35. When an investigator has developed a formula which gives a complete representation of the phenomena within a certain range, he may be prone to satisfaction. Would it not be wiser if he should say 'Foiled again! I can find out no more about Nature along this line.'
Arthur Eddington
#36. Electrical force is defined as something which causes motion of electrical charge; an electrical charge is something which exerts electric force.
Arthur Eddington
#37. For the truth of the conclusions of physical science, observation is the supreme Court of Appeal.
Arthur Eddington
#38. Whatever else there may be in our nature, responsibility toward truth is one of its attributes.
Arthur Eddington
#39. The pursuit of truth in science transcends national boundaries. It takes us beyond hatred and anger and fear. It is the best of us.
Arthur Eddington
#40. It is one thing for the human mind to extract from the phenomena of nature the laws which it has itself put into them; it may be a far harder thing to extract laws over which it has no control.
Arthur Eddington
#41. Falling in love is one of the activities forbidden that tiresome person, the consistently reasonable man.
Arthur Eddington
#43. What is possible in the Cavendish Laboratory may not be too difficult in the sun.
Arthur Eddington
#45. I am aware that many critics consider the conditions in the stars not sufficiently extreme ... the stars are not hot enough. The critics lay themselves open to an obvious retort: we tell them to go and find a hotter place.
Arthur Eddington
#46. It is even possible that laws which have not their origin in the mind may be irrational, and we can never succeed in formulating them.
Arthur Eddington
#47. We have found that where science has progressed the farthest, the mind has but regained from nature that which the mind put into nature.
Arthur Eddington
#49. There was a time when we wanted to be told what an electron is. The question was never answered. No familiar conceptions can be woven around the electron; it belongs to the waiting list.
Arthur Eddington
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