Top 33 Charles Townes Quotes
#1. The late Richard Feynman, a superb physicist, said once as we talked about the laser that the way to tell a great idea is that, when people hear it, they say, 'Gee, I could have thought of that.'
Charles Hard Townes
#2. I was very eager to produce an oscillator for short waves. I was doing science with microwaves, and I would get down to a few millimetres in wavelength, but I wanted to get shorter wavelengths; I wanted to get into the infra-red because I saw there was a lot more to be done there.
Charles H. Townes
#3. I understand that in our work - doesn't matter whether it's acting or writing - what's important isn't fame or glamour, none of the things I used to dream about, it's the ability to endure.
Anton Chekhov
#5. She stood a little straighter, closed her eyes, and raised her arms in embrace of her final act.
The she took a deep breath and dove, headfirst--face-first--into oblivion
John Saul
#6. We can't avoid age. However, we can avoid some aging. Continue to do things. Be active. Life is fantastic in the way it adjusts to demands; if you use your muscles and mind, they stay there much longer.
Charles H. Townes
#7. It was strange, in a way, because there were no ideas involved in the laser that weren't already known by somebody 25 years before lasers were discovered. The ideas were all there; just, nobody put it together.
Charles H. Townes
#8. The beaver told the rabbit as they stared at the Hoover Dam: No, I didn't build it myself, but it's based on an idea of mine
Charles Hard Townes
#9. Alfred Nobel really understood very well the necessary supra-natural character of the human enterprise.
Charles H. Townes
#10. What is the ratio of the time I spend solving problems to the time I spend scaling successes?
Chip Heath
#11. Some women can drink some men under the table, but a man under the table can still be dangerous.
Jo Foxworth
#12. There is some truth to the idea that, in the fields of science, individual contributions of great significance are possible.
Charles H. Townes
#13. I was brought up as Christian, and while my ideas have changed, I have always felt myself religiously oriented.
Charles H. Townes
#14. It's almost a sort of fairy story tale, just what a novelist would write about a discovery.
Charles Hard Townes
#15. Let's help people in this country with the resources we have.
Dennis Kucinich
#16. Awareness of the settler-colonialist context of US history writing is essential if one is to avoid the laziness of the default position and the trap of a mythological unconscious belief in manifest destiny. The
Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz
#17. One of the things my family taught me - I think very important in religion and science - is that you must be ready to stand up for what you think. Decide what you really think is best, and stick with it.
Charles H. Townes
#18. To establish despotism over such a mighty nation must be vain, must be fatal. We shall be forced ultimately to retreat: let us retreat when we can, not when we must.
Barbara W. Tuchman
#19. In many cases, people who win a Nobel prize, their work slows down after that because of the distractions. Yes, fame is rewarding, but it's a pity if it keeps you from doing the work you are good at.
Charles H. Townes
#20. Much public thinking follows a rut. The same thing is true in science. People get stuck and don't look in other directions.
Charles H. Townes
#21. I don't think that science is complete at all. We don't understand everything, and one can see, within science itself, there are many inconsistencies. We just have to accept that we don't understand.
Charles H. Townes
#22. What does one want when one is engaged in the sexual act? That everything around you give you its utter attention, think only of you, care only for you ... every man wants to be a tyrant when he fornicates.
Marquis De Sade
#24. I knew I wanted to be a scientist. Which kind of scientist was the question.
Charles H. Townes
#25. The imposing edifice of science provides a challenging view of what can be achieved by the accumulation of many small efforts in a steady objective and dedicated search for truth.
Charles H. Townes
#26. While you're governing the colony and I'm writing political philosophy, They'll never guess that in the darkness of night we sneak into each other's room and play checkers and have pillow fights.
Orson Scott Card
#27. Many have a feeling that somehow intelligence must have been involved in the laws of the universe.
Charles Hard Townes
#28. Science has faith. We make postulates. We can't prove those postulates, but we have faith in them.
Charles H. Townes
#29. I strongly believe in the existence of God, based on intuition, observations, logic, and also scientific knowledge.
Charles Hard Townes
#30. Science is exploration. The fundamental nature of exploration is that we don't know what's there. We can guess and hope and aim to find out certain things, but we have to expect surprises.
Charles H. Townes
#31. When God said "Let there be light" he surely must have meant perfectly coherent light.
Charles Hard Townes
#32. The development of science is basically a social phenomenon, dependent on hard work and mutual support of many scientists and on the societies in which they live.
Charles H. Townes
#33. Firstly you must always implicitly obey orders, without attempting to form any opinion of your own regarding their propriety. Secondly, you must consider every man your enemy who speaks ill of your king; and thirdly you must hate a Frenchman as you hate the devil.
Horatio Nelson
