Top 100 Quotes About Physics
#1. You won't see me writing about particle physics, or even planetary geology, or chemistry. I practically failed chemistry, and if I had to write a book in any of those areas, I don't think it would go well.
Mary Roach
#2. Therefore psychologically we must keep all the theories in our heads, and every theoretical physicist who is any good knows six or seven different theoretical representations for exactly the same physics.
Richard P. Feynman
#3. A worldwide flood destroyed all life on earth about five thousand years ago requires denying an immense amount of generally accepted knowledge - from astronomy, physics, geology, paleontology, anthropology, archaeology, biology, cave paintings, and more.
Marcus J. Borg
#5. What physics tells us is that everything comes down to geometry and the interactions of elementary particles. And things can happen only if these interactions are perfectly balanced.
Antony Garrett Lisi
#6. Aren't you at all curious about your past?" Rhys asked.
"No, my present is who I am. Your identity is whoever you choose to be, not who your parents were."
"But as a scientist you know that prior events influence it, and the future."
"In physics, yes. In people, no.
Jeffrey Perren
#7. I think the really cool and compelling thing about math and physics is that it opens up entry to all these hypotheticals - or at least, it gives you the language to talk about them. But at the same time, if a scenario is completely disconnected from reality, it's not all that interesting.
Randall Munroe
#8. Physics is not about having memorized all the answers, but rather about asking the right questions. For when the right question is posed of a phenomenon, either the answer becomes clear or at least a path to further and more fruitful questioning is revealed.
James Kakalios
#9. There is a close analogy between organic chemistry in its relation to biochemistry and pure mathematics in its relation to physics.
Robert Robinson
#10. For more than 200 years, materialists have promised that science will eventually explain everything in terms of physics and chemistry. Believers are sustained by the faith that scientific discoveries will justify their beliefs.
Rupert Sheldrake
#11. How many of you have broken no laws this month? That's the kind of society I want to build. I want a guarantee - with physics and mathematics, not with laws - that we can give ourselves real privacy of personal communications.
John Gilmore
#12. [Computer science] is not really about computers and it's not about computers in the same sense that physics is not really about particle accelerators, and biology is not about microscopes and Petri dishes ... and geometry isn't really about using surveying instruments.
Hal Abelson
#13. The application of group theory to physics became one of the main branches of physics that I specialized in.
Chen-Ning Yang
#14. I don't comment on the physics errors of 'Star Wars,' all right. I just - you let that one go.
Neil DeGrasse Tyson
#15. The great problem of today is, how to subject all physical phenomena to dynamical laws. With all the experimental devices, and all the mathematical appliances of this generation, the human mind has been baffled in its attempts to construct a universal science of physics.
Joseph Lovering
#16. I am now convinced that theoretical physics is actual philosophy.
Max Born
#17. I spent eighteen months as a graduate student in physics at Columbia University, waiting unhappily for an opportunity to work in a laboratory and wondering if I should continue in physics.
Sidney Altman
#18. We must be physicists in order to be creative since so far codes of values and ideals have been constructed in ignorance of physics or even in contradiction to physics.
Friedrich Nietzsche
#19. Werewolves had to obey the laws of physics just like everyone else. The
Gail Carriger
#20. The real thing that physics tell us about the universe is that it's big, rare event happens all the time - including life - and that doesn't mean it's special.
Lawrence M. Krauss
#21. Physics isn't a religion. If it were, we'd have a much easier time raising money.
Leon M. Lederman
#22. Children need to be exploring their physical world. They need to be learning the fundamental laws of physics by manipulating objects.
David Perlmutter
#23. This is not what I thought physics was about when I started out: I learned that the idea is to explain nature in terms of clearly understood mathematical laws; but perhaps comparisons are the best we can hope for.
Hans Christian Von Baeyer
#24. The point is that for our ancestors, the universe was a picture; for modern physics it is a story.
C.S. Lewis
#26. It was no secret joke that brought the smile and the sparkle in his eye, it was physics.
Feynman, Richard
#27. [Question: What do you think was the most important physics idea to emerge this year?]
We won't know for a few years.
Stephen Hawking
#28. Nature is not embarrassed by difficulties of analysis. She avoids complication only in means. Nature seems to be proposed to do much with little: it is a principle that the development of physics constantly supports by new evidence.
Jean Fresnel
#29. What quantum physics teaches us is that everything we thought was physical is not physical.
Bruce H. Lipton
#30. I considered law and math. My Dad was a lawyer. I think though I would have ended up in physics if I didn't end up in computer science.
Bill Gates
#31. So strong was the preconception of absolute space and time in the scientific mentality of those days, that Lorentz did not realize the grand transcendence of what he had discovered, and contented himself with remodeling the edifice of Physics
instead of rebuilding it with a new foundation.
Felix Alba-Juez
#32. We live, I think, in the century of science and, perhaps, even in the century of physics.
Polykarp Kusch
#33. Children have a tendency to behave as poorly as the most poorly behaved kid in the room. The laws of physics dictate that if there is a kid screaming and running in the hallway of a hotel, all the other children will scream and run in the hallway of the hotel.
Jim Gaffigan
#34. Music pulled me like a gravitational force. I entered college as a physics major but left as a Bachelor of Music, a degree with the same practical application as, say, one in the History of Chinese Poetry.
Marshall Brickman
#35. The day I went into physics class it was death.
Sylvia Plath
#36. I am all for getting Prayer/Religion back into the schools. And while we're at it we should get more Science/Physics into the church ...
George Martin
#37. In physics, your solution should convince a reasonable person. In math, you have to convince a person who's trying to make trouble. Ultimately, in physics, you're hoping to convince Nature. And I've found Nature to be pretty reasonable.
Frank Wilczek
#38. My 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 Hornbacher
#39. You know," he huffed, "for such a skinny girl you weigh a ton. It's like a miracle of physics or something. Are you sure you're not made of lead?
Kiersten White
#40. When I was 18, science, physics, and math were my favorite. I was a bit of a nerd - the only girl with a lot of boys at chess championships.
Bjork
#41. Progress in social psychology is necessary to counteract the dangers which arise from the progress in physics and medicine.
Erich Fromm
#42. Physics is like sex: sure, it may give some practical results, but that's not why we do it.
Richard Feynman
#43. 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
#44. Novels aren't pedagogical instruments, or instructions in law or physics or any other discipline. A novel has to be an emotional experience, a trip of the imagination, and because science has raised so many issues that concern and affect humans, it's a good starting place for me.
Alan Lightman
#45. In a world described by quantum physics, an insistence on causal closure of the physical world amounts to a quasi-religious faith in the absolute powers of matter, a belief that is no more than a commitment to brute, and outmoded, materialism.
Jeffrey M. Schwartz
#46. I do not understand modern physics at all, but my colleagues who know a lot about the physics of very small things, like the particles in atoms, or very large things, like the universe, seem to be running into one queerness after another, from puzzle to puzzle.
Lewis Thomas
#47. In a lot of scientists, the ratio of wonder to skepticism declines in time. That may be connected with the fact that in some fields-mathematics, physics, some others-the great discoveries are almost entirely made by youngsters.
Carl Sagan
#48. It is this breathtaking image [of] success that motivates us and motivates kids to follow and understand rocket science: to understand the importance of physics and math and, in many ways, to have that awe at exploration of the frontiers of the unknown.
Steve Jurvetson
#49. As a scholarly discipline, economics has always suffered from physics envy.
Robert Kuttner
#50. During the war years I worked on the development of radar and other radio systems for the R.A.F. and, though gaining much in engineering experience and in understanding people, rapidly forgot most of the physics I had learned.
Martin Ryle
#52. Physics is really figuring out how to discover new things that are counterintuitive, like quantum mechanics. It's really counterintuitive.
Elon Musk
#53. We were making the first step out of the age of chemistry and physics, and into the age of biology.
Jeremy Rifkin
#54. While there is such a thing as correctness in ethics, in interpretation, in mathematics, the way to understand that is not by trying to model it on the ways in which we get things right in physics ...
Hilary Putnam
#55. They can shout down the head of the physics department at Cal Tech.
James Stockdale
#57. Physics is becoming too difficult for the physicists.
David Hilbert
#58. Happy COUPLES are those who have passed both chemistry and physics!
Mohith Agadi
#59. Rulers do not like to admit that their power is restricted by any laws other than those of physics and biology. They never ascribe their failures and frustrations to the violation of economic law.
Ludwig Von Mises
#60. Science is beautiful when it makes simple explanations of phenomena or connections between different observations. Examples include the double helix in biology and the fundamental equations of physics.
Stephen Hawking
#61. Earlier in this century, the Heisenberg Principle established that the very act of observing a natural phenomenon can change what is being observed. Although the initial theory was limited in practice to special cases in subatomic physics, the philosophical implications were and are staggering.
Al Gore
#62. The biggest question, transcending physics and the realm of how he was able to do the extraordinary things he did, remained firmly rooted in the realm of metaphysics and begged an answer to why he could do these things.
Sol Luckman
#63. Physics filled me with awe, put me in touch with a sense of original causes. Physics brought me closer to God. That feeling stayed with me throughout my years in science. Whenever one of my students came to me with a scientific project, I asked only one question, 'Will it bring you nearer to God?'
Isidor Isaac Rabi
#64. One of the principal achievements of physics in the 20th century has been the revelation that the atom is not indivisible or elementary at all but has a complex structure.
Sheldon Lee Glashow
#65. My God, what a sensation to be an atom in the scheme of such grandiosity. The allurement, the jazz, and the physics of it all ...
Carew Papritz
#66. As an assistant in the polytechnic department, I was able to finance new studies and got my Physics Masters Degree in 1958 and my Ph.D. in 1959.
Francois Englert
#67. I got bored with the topic; I felt this was 19th century physics. I was wondering if there was still something profound that could be made with light microscopy. So I saw that the diffraction barrier was the only important problem that had been left over.
Stefan Hell
#68. I didn't know what kinds of questions to ask in mathematics. In physics, I could see there were things that were known and things that weren't.
Margaret Geller
#69. It's just a stupid game," my wife had always told me. How could I explain it was more than just a game...It was the celebration of a kind of mystery; the fusion of the mechanics of physics and the feeling of soul.
Randy Attwood
#70. The Universe is a big ship and its captain is the Laws of Physics! The bad news is that there seems to be no safe harbour to dock and no lifeboats if we sink!
Mehmet Murat Ildan
#71. Quantum physics has found that there is no empty space in the human cell, but it is a teeming, electric-magnet ic field of possibility or potential
Deepak Chopra
#72. The laws of physics are the canvas God laid down on which to paint his masterpiece. Vittoria
Dan Brown
#73. Given that the 'common sense' of many contemporary philosophers is shaped and supplemented by ideas from classical physics, the locus of most metaphysical discussions is an image of the world that sits unhappily between the manifest image and an out of date scientific image.11
James Ladyman
#74. In science, "fact" can only mean "confirmed to such a degree that it would be perverse to withhold provisional assent." I suppose that apples might start to rise tomorrow, but the possibility does not merit equal time in physics classrooms.
G.K. Chesterton
#75. If [quantum theory] is correct, it signifies the end of physics as a science.
Albert Einstein
#76. Most people have no concept of how an automatic transmission works, yet they know how to drive a car. You don't have to study physics to understand the laws of motion to drive a car. You don't have to understand any of this stuff to use Macintosh.
Steve Jobs
#77. My father was a research scientist in tropical medicine, so I always assumed I would be a scientist, too. I felt that medicine was too vague and inexact, so I chose physics.
Stephen Hawking
#78. The laws of physics that deal with inertia also apply to humans, such that situations tend to remain the same over time.
Del Suggs
#79. What really matters for me is ... the more active role of the observer in quantum physics ... According to quantum physics the observer has indeed a new relation to the physical events around him in comparison with the classical observer, who is merely a spectator.
Wolfgang Pauli
#80. Physics tells us observations can't be predicted absolutely. Rather, there's a range of possible observations each with a different probability.
Robert Lanza
#81. It's not clear in physics why you can't see the future.
Brian Josephson
#83. Thanks to my fortunate idea of introducing the relativity principle into physics, you (and others) now enormously overrate my scientific abilities, to the point where this makes me quite uncomfortable.
Albert Einstein
#85. [About describing atomic models in the language of classical physics:]
We must be clear that when it comes to atoms, language can be used only as in poetry. The poet, too, is not nearly so concerned with describing facts as with creating images and establishing mental connections.
Niels Bohr
#86. Well, I'm leaning probably toward the sciences like physics.
Amy Carter
#87. The laws of Congress and the laws of physics have grown increasingly divergent, and the laws of physics are not likely to yield.
Bill McKibben
#88. It was one of those dreams that invade the space between seconds, proving sleep has its own physics- where time shrinks and swells, lifetimes unspool in a blink, and cities burn to ash in a mere flutter of lashes.
Laini Taylor
#89. Each juggler should be trained in the ignorance of the laws of physics.
Stanislaw Jerzy Lec
#90. I 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 Shiva
#91. Physics is often stranger than science fiction, and I think science fiction takes its cues from physics: higher dimensions, wormholes, the warping of space and time, stuff like that.
Michio Kaku
#92. It disguises itself as motor vehicle knowledge, but really it's physics, which any other time would be fascinating but not right now, not while you're trying to learn to drive.
Polly Horvath
#93. From a consideration of the immense volume of newly discovered facts in the field of physics, especially atomic physics, in recent years it might well appear to the layman that the main problems were already solved and that only more detailed work was necessary.
Victor Francis Hess
#94. I think the writing of literature should give pleasure. What else should it be about? It is not nuclear physics. It actually has to give pleasure or it is worth nothing.
Stephen Greenblatt
#95. I tend to approach things from a physics framework. And physics teaches you to reason from first principles rather than by analogy.
Elon Musk
#96. If it dies, it's biology; if it blows up, it's chemistry;
if it doesn't work, it's physics!"
As quoted from grafitti on a bathroom wall.
John Wilkes
#97. Although I was really interested in physics, I think I wanted to do it because I thought it was really hard. I did theoretical physics.
Lenny Abrahamson
#98. [Heisenberg's seminal 1925 paper initiating quantum mechanics marked] one of the great jumps - perhaps the greatest - in the development of twentieth century physics.
Abraham Pais
#99. Don't waste your time on beaming people up or down. Instead, consider gravity waves as advanced physics of the universe that could be used to travel interstellar distances.
Buzz Aldrin
#100. The truth is, everyone is confused by quantum physics.
David Walton
