James Jeans Quotes

#1. Science should leave off making pronouncements: the river of knowledge has too often turned back on itself.

James Jeans

#2. One must stand stiller than still. On reverse time travel.

James Jeans

#3. The human race, whose intelligence dates back only a single tick of the astronomical clock, could hardly hope to understand so soon what it all means.

James Jeans

#4. Put three grains of sand inside a vast cathedral, and the cathedral will be more closely packed with sand than space is with stars.

James Jeans

#5. Nature seems very conversant with the rules of pure mathematics, as our own mathematicians have formulated them in their studies, out of their own inner consciousness and without drawing to any appreciable extent on their experience of the outer world.

James Jeans

#6. Humanity is at the very beginning of its existence-a new-born babe, with all the unexplored potentialities of babyhood; and until the last few moments its interest has been centred, absolutely and exclusively, on its cradle and feeding bottle.

James Jeans

#7. The universe can best be pictured as consisting of pure thought, the thought of what for want of a better word we must describe as a mathematical thinker.

James Jeans

#8. Life exists in the universe only because the carbon atom possesses certain exceptional properties.

James Jeans

#9. The essential fact is that all the pictures which science now draws of nature, and which alone seem capable of according with observational facts, are mathematical pictures.

James Jeans

#10. The really happy person is the one who can enjoy the scenery, even when they have to take a detour.[make the best of what is necessary ... if you can't have what you love, love what you have ... as there are lovable or at least positive aspects in everything, because anything could be worse]

James Jeans

#11. The plain fact is that there are no conclusions.

James Jeans

#12. The stream of knowledge is heading towards a non-mechanical reality; the universe begins to look more like a great thought than like a machine. Mind no longer appears to be an accidental intruder into the realm of matter ... we ought rather hail it as the creator and governor of the realm of matter.

James Jeans

#13. All discussion of the ultimate nature of things must necessarily be barren unless we have some extraneous standards against which to compare them.

James Jeans

#14. We may as well cut out group theory. That is a subject that will never be of any use in physics.

James Jeans

#15. The motion of the stars over our heads is as much an illusion as that of the cows, trees and churches that flash past the windows of our train.

James Jeans

#16. The universe begins to look more like a great thought than a great machine.

James Jeans

#17. From the intrinsic evidence of his creation, the Great Architect of the Universe now begins to appear as a pure mathematician.

James Jeans