Physics Quotes

Quantum theory provides us with a striking illustration of the fact that we can fully understand a c...

Not only is the Universe stranger than we think, it is stranger than we can think.

Here the attention of the research workers is primarily directed to the problem of reconciling the c...

Whether we like it or not, modern ways are going to alter and in part destroy traditional customs an...

The responsibility of any science, any pure pursuit, is ultimately to itself, and on this point phys...

Light brings us the news of the Universe.

It has today occurred to me that an amplifier using semiconductors rather than vacuum is in principl...

Wolfgang Pauli, in the months before Heisenberg's paper on matrix mechanics pointed the way to a new...

As I regard physics and psychology as complementary types of examination, I am certain that there is...

... it should be remembered that the atomicity of electric charge has already found its expression i...

The theoretical determination of the fine structure constant is certainly the most important of the ...

Photons have mass? I didn’t even know they were Catholic.

I introduce the subject of fine structure with a mini-calendar of events. ...Winter 1914-15. Sommerf...

The determination of the average man is not merely a matter of speculative curiosity; it may be of t...

It’s hard to build models of inflation that don't lead to a multiverse. It’s not impossible, so I th...

Then there are those who think their bodies don't exist. They live by mechanical time. They rise at ...

The release of atomic power has changed everything except our way of thinking ... the solution to th...

The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existence. One cann...

No, this trick won't work... How on earth are you ever going to explain in terms of chemistry and ph...

One must divide one's time between politics and equations. But our equations are much more important...

For us physicists believe the separation between past, present, and future is only an illusion, alth...

Matter tells space how to curve, space tells matter how to move.

Nothing happens until something moves.

Something deeply hidden had to be behind things.

… there are no arbitrary constants ... nature is so constituted that it is possible logically to lay...

If you've never done anything wrong it's probably because you have never tried anything new.

Indubitably, Magick is one of the subtlest and most difficult of the sciences and arts. There is mor...

Order is heaven's first law.

Until Einstein (roughly), THE universe of Newton was, for us, THE universe. With Einstein, it became...

The capital ... shall form a fund, the interest of which shall be distributed annually as prizes to ...

Let me here remind you that the essence of dramatic tragedy is not unhappiness. It resides in the so...

Maybe knowledge is as fundamental, or even more fundamental than [material] reality.

Give me a place to stand, a lever long enough and a fulcrum. and I can move the Earth

All integral laws of spectral lines and of atomic theory spring originally from the quantum theory. ...

After the discovery of spectral analysis no one trained in physics could doubt the problem of the at...

Michael O'Toole had no difficulty recognizing which questions in life should be answered by physics ...

There was a young lady named Bright,Whose speed was far faster than light;She started one dayIn a re...

We also find *physics*, in the widest sense of the word, concerned with the explanation of phenomena...

A hint of - dare I say? - animism has entered into the scientific worldview. The physical world is n...

Physics is mathematical not because we know so much about the physical world, but because we know so...

The fundamental concept in social science is Power, in the same sense in which Energy is the fundame...

Energy is liberated matter, matter is energy waiting to happen.

Physics is really nothing more than a search for ultimate simplicity, but so far all we have is a ki...

For the moment we might very well can them DUNNOS (for Dark Unknown Nonreflective Nondetectable Obje...

You may not feel outstandingly robust, but if you are an average-sized adult you will contain within...

Life, just like the stars, the planets and the galaxies, is just a temporary structure on the long r...

(On the energy radiated by the Sun)It's four hundred million million million million watts. That is ...

Light is the only connection we have with the Universe beyond our solar system, and the only connect...

Assessing existence while failing to embrace the insights of modern physics would be like wrestling ...

The bottom line is that time travel is allowed by the laws of physics.

Free will is the sensation of making a choice. The sensation is real, but the choice seems illusory....

We all love a good story. We all love a tantalizing mystery. We all love the underdog pressing onwar...

...quantum mechanics—the physics of our world—requires that you hold such pedestrian complaints in a...

Physicists have come to realize that mathematics, when used with sufficient care, is a proven pathwa...

Einstein, twenty-six years old, only three years away from crude privation, still a patent examiner,...

The atom can't be seen, yet its existence can be proved. And it is simple to prove that it can't eve...

Black holes collect problems faster than they collect matter.

The laws of nature cannot be randomly reshuffled at the cusps [of an oscillating universe]. If the u...

There is something stunningly narrow about how the Anthropic Principle is phrased. Yes, only certain...

A university student attending lectures on general relativity i the morning and others on quantum me...

Here, on the edge of what we know, in contact with the ocean of the unknown, shines the mystery and ...

What are we, in this boundless and glowing world?

Life on Earth gives only a small taste of what can happen in the universe.

What does what we know or don't know have to do with the laws that govern the world?

When Einstein died, his greatest rival, Bohr, found for him words of moving admiration. When a few y...

It is hardly surprising that there are more things in heaven and earth, dear reader, than have been ...

It must have appeared almost as improbable to the earlier geologists, that the laws of earthquakes s...

The rules of physics are, in some cases, suspiciously anthropic.

... it is shameful that there are so few women in science... In China there are many, many women in ...

The laws of physics is the canvas God laid down on which to paint his masterpiece

Leonardo believed his research had thepotential to convert millions to a more spiritual life. Last y...

If antimatter and matter make contact, both are destroyedinstantly. Physicists call the process ‘ann...

Thus identified with astronomy, in proclaiming truths supposed to be hostile to Scripture, Geology h...

All creation necessarily ends in this: Creators, powerless, fleeing from the things they have wrough...

While Newton seemed to draw off the veil from some of the mysteries of nature, he showed at the same...

The death of God left the angels in a strange position.

And as they drifter up their minds sang with the ecstatic knowledge that either what they were doing...

The Heart of Gold fled on silently through the night of space, now on conventional photon drive. Its...

Very strange people, physicists, " he said as soon as they were outside again. "In my experience the...

Same as you, Arthur. I hitched a ride. After all, with a degree in maths and another in astrophysics...

Since every piece of matter in the Universe is in some way affected by every other piece of matter i...

[..] when we get down to the subatomic level, the solid world we live in also consists, again rather...

String theory is an attempt at a deeper description of nature by thinking of an elementary particle ...

We have one real candidate for changing the rules; this is string theory. In string theory the one-d...

Away from the safety of your home, the universe was not made for your convenience.

The great object is to find the theory of the matter [of X-rays] before anyone else, for nearly ever...

All science is either physics or stamp collecting.

It was quite the most incredible event that has ever happened to me in my life. It was almost as inc...

Now I know what the atom looks like.

Consciousness cannot be accounted for in physical terms. For consciousness is absolutely fundamental...

The answer to the ancient question 'Why is there something rather than nothing?' would then be that ...

QED [quantum electrodynamics] reduces ... "all of chemistry and most of physics," to one basic inter...

[Regarding mathematics,] there are now few studies more generally recognized, for good reasons or ba...

Nonsense is that which does not fit into the prearranged patterns which we have superimposed on real...

There was yet another disadvantage attaching to the whole of Newton’s physical inquiries, ... the wa...

If and when all the laws governing physical phenomena are finally discovered, and all the empirical ...

It took less than an hour to make the atoms, a few hundred million years to make the stars and plane...

Mathematics is the cheapest science. Unlike physics or chemistry, it does not require any expensive ...

I started studying law, but this I could stand just for one semester. I couldn't stand more. Then I ...

But every day I go to work I'm making a bet that the universe is simple, symmetric, and aestheticall...