Top 39 Murray Gell-Mann Quotes

#1. Of course the word chaos is used in rather a vague sense by a lot of writers, but in physics it means a particular phenomenon, namely that in a nonlinear system the outcome is often indefinitely, arbitrarily sensitive to tiny changes in the initial condition.

Murray Gell-Mann

Murray Gell-Mann Quotes #27763
#2. I am frequently astonished that it so often results in correct predictions of experimental results.

Murray Gell-Mann

Murray Gell-Mann Quotes #32112
#3. The chaos can act as a magnifier of quantum fluctuations so that they can produce sizable effects in the world around us. But we know that that can happen often.

Murray Gell-Mann

Murray Gell-Mann Quotes #68134
#4. I would recommend that skeptics devote even more effort than they do now to understanding the reasons why so many people want or need to believe.

Murray Gell-Mann

Murray Gell-Mann Quotes #161417
#5. The world of the quark has everything to do with a jaguar circling in the night.

Murray Gell-Mann

Murray Gell-Mann Quotes #171382
#6. Think how hard physics would be if particles could think

Murray Gell-Mann

Murray Gell-Mann Quotes #253382
#7. For me, the study of these laws is inseparable from a love of Nature in all its manifestations.

Murray Gell-Mann

Murray Gell-Mann Quotes #275849
#8. Sometimes the probabilities are very close to certainties, but they're never really certainties.

Murray Gell-Mann

Murray Gell-Mann Quotes #301952
#9. What is especially striking and remarkable is that in fundamental physics a beautiful or elegant theory is more likely to be right than a theory that is inelegant.

Murray Gell-Mann

Murray Gell-Mann Quotes #303079
#10. I have been interested in phenomena involving complexity, diversity and evolution since I was a young boy.

Murray Gell-Mann

Murray Gell-Mann Quotes #374475
#11. So the old Copenhagen interpretation needs to be generalized, needs to be replaced by something that can be used for the whole universe, and can be used also in cases where there is plenty of individuality and history.

Murray Gell-Mann

Murray Gell-Mann Quotes #444839
#12. But when researchers at Bell Labs discovered that static tends to come from particular places in the sky, the whole field of radio astronomy opened up.

Murray Gell-Mann

Murray Gell-Mann Quotes #547284
#13. One thing that makes the adventure of working in our field particularly rewarding, especially in attempting to improve the theory, is that ... a chief criterion for the selection of a correct hypothesis ... seems to be the criterion of beauty, simplicity, or elegance.

Murray Gell-Mann

Murray Gell-Mann Quotes #571122
#14. You know, there was a time, just before I started to study physical science, when astronomers thought that systems such as we have here in the solar system required a rare triple collision of stars.

Murray Gell-Mann

Murray Gell-Mann Quotes #594178
#15. While many questions about quantum mechanics are still not fully resolved, there is no point in introducing needless mystification where in fact no problem exists. Yet a great deal of recent writing about quantum mechanics has done just that.

Murray Gell-Mann

Murray Gell-Mann Quotes #677787
#16. Modern education is like being taken to the world's greatest restaurant & being forced to eat the menu.

Murray Gell-Mann

Murray Gell-Mann Quotes #845275
#17. Both biological and cultural diversity are now severely threatened and working for their preservation is a critical task.

Murray Gell-Mann

Murray Gell-Mann Quotes #873986
#18. Hugh Everett's work has been described by many people in terms of many worlds, the idea being that every one of the various alternative histories, branching histories, is assigned some sort of reality.

Murray Gell-Mann

Murray Gell-Mann Quotes #951192
#19. What I try to do in the book is to trace the chain of relationships running from elementary particles, fundamental building blocks of matter everywhere in the universe, such as quarks, all the way to complex entities, and in particular complex adaptive system like jaguars.

Murray Gell-Mann

Murray Gell-Mann Quotes #1004492
#20. We are driven by the usual insatiable curiosity of the scientist, and our work is a delightful game.

Murray Gell-Mann

Murray Gell-Mann Quotes #1031284
#21. Our planet doesn't seem to be the result of anything very special.

Murray Gell-Mann

Murray Gell-Mann Quotes #1066830
#22. Now, what that means is that there is fundamental indeterminacy from quantum mechanics, but besides that there are other sources of effective indeterminacy.

Murray Gell-Mann

Murray Gell-Mann Quotes #1135615
#23. Just because things get a little dingy at the subatomic level doesn't mean all bets are off.

Murray Gell-Mann

Murray Gell-Mann Quotes #1188526
#24. As a theoretical physicist, I feel at once proud and humble at the thought of the illustrious figures that have preceded me here to receive the greatest of all honors in science, the Nobel prize.

Murray Gell-Mann

Murray Gell-Mann Quotes #1202781
#25. Planets are too dim to be detected with existing equipment, far away, except in these very special circumstances where they're seen by their gravitational effect.

Murray Gell-Mann

Murray Gell-Mann Quotes #1300526
#26. Enthusiasm is followed by disappointment and even depression, and then by renewed enthusiasm.

Murray Gell-Mann

Murray Gell-Mann Quotes #1359294
#27. Everything that is not forbidden is compulsory.

Murray Gell-Mann

Murray Gell-Mann Quotes #1365470
#28. Sustainability is living on nature's income rather than living on its capital.

Murray Gell-Mann

Murray Gell-Mann Quotes #1400438
#29. The persistence of erroneous beliefs exacerbates the widespread anachronistic failure to recognize the urgent problems that face humanity on this planet.

Murray Gell-Mann

Murray Gell-Mann Quotes #1506383
#30. But I don't actually adopt the point of view that our subjective impression of free will, which is a kind of indeterminacy behavior, comes from quantum mechanical indeterminacy.

Murray Gell-Mann

Murray Gell-Mann Quotes #1552449
#31. If we look at the way the universe behaves, quantum mechanics gives us fundamental, unavoidable indeterminacy, so that alternative histories of the universe can be assigned probability.

Murray Gell-Mann

Murray Gell-Mann Quotes #1584918
#32. I think also of my colleagues in elementary particle theory in many lands, and feel that in some measure I am here as a representative of our small, informal, international fraternity.

Murray Gell-Mann

Murray Gell-Mann Quotes #1587368
#33. When you think you're listening to several conversations at once, they tell me, you may really simply be time sharing - that is, listening a little bit to this one, a little bit to that one.

Murray Gell-Mann

Murray Gell-Mann Quotes #1691174
#34. I do not keep up with the details of particle physics.

Murray Gell-Mann

Murray Gell-Mann Quotes #1717538
#35. Well, I don't like to get involved in these philosophical issues very much.

Murray Gell-Mann

Murray Gell-Mann Quotes #1725459
#36. Superstitions typically involve seeing order where in fact there is none, and denial amounts to rejecting evidence of regularities, sometimes even ones that are staring us in the face.

Murray Gell-Mann

Murray Gell-Mann Quotes #1743561
#37. If someone says that he can think or talk about quantum physics without becoming dizzy, that shows only that he has not understood anything whatever about it.

Murray Gell-Mann

Murray Gell-Mann Quotes #1748654
#38. In fact any experiment that measures a quantum effect is one in which the quantum effect is aligned with the behavior of some heavy, macroscopic object; that's how we measure it.

Murray Gell-Mann

Murray Gell-Mann Quotes #1818864
#39. Niels Bohr brainwashed a whole generation of theorists into thinking that the job (interpreting quantum theory) was done 50 years ago.

Murray Gell-Mann

Murray Gell-Mann Quotes #1879529

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