PHYSICS QUOTES
quotations about physics
Physicists use the wave theory on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays and the particle theory on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays.
WILLIAM HENRY BRAGG
attributed, Dictionary of Scientific Quotations
First Physics Law of Cartoons: Gravity will not work 'till you look down.
ANONYMOUS
Is it that science forms a closed system? Why is it that the elements of reality it ignores never come in to disturb it? The reason is that all the terms of physics are defined in terms of one another. The abstractions with which physics begins are all it ever has to do with.
J. W. N. SULLIVAN
The Limitations of Science
Physics and philosophy are at most a few thousand years old, but probably have lives of thousands of millions of years stretching away in front of them. They are only just beginning to get under way.
JAMES JEANS
Physics and Philosophy
Both the old and new physics were dealing with shadow-symbols, but the new physics was forced to be aware of that fact -- forced to be aware that it was dealing with shadows and illusions, not reality.
KEN WILBER
Quantum Questions: Mystical Writings of the World's Greatest Physicists
There is nothing special in the world. Nothing magic. Just physics.
CHUCK PALAHNIUK
Diary
Physics is mathematical, not because we know so much about the physical world, but because we know so little: it is only its mathematical properties that we can discover.
BERTRAND RUSSELL
Philosophy
I had spent six years slugging my way through many dozens of physics textbooks that were carefully written with the best of pedagogical plans, but there was something missing. Physics is the most interesting subject in the world because it is about how the world works, and yet the textbooks had been thoroughly wrung of any connection with the real world. The fun was missing.
JEARL WALKER, DAVID HALLIDAY & ROBERT RESNICK
Fundamentals of Physics
The physics is theoretical, but the fun is real.
ANONYMOUS
Physics is becoming too difficult for the physicists.
DAVID HILBERT
attributed, German-Jewish Pioneers in Science 1900-1933
The pivotal event in physics is often referred to as the invention of the first barometer, which of course it was.
LEON M. LEDERMAN & DICK TERESI
The God Particle: If the Universe is the Answer, what is the Question?
I try to keep one finger on new physics discoveries and what's going on with dark matter and dark energy, and the Higgs Boson, and gravitational waves, but it's all so completely foreign to us because we've evolved to function on particular scales of space and time. And that's what we're good at: seeing and hearing on that scale and thinking on that scale. But essentially as we scratch the borders of reality, we realize that it's something that we just can't intuit or understand. It's not like that we just say "Oh that's it. That's how the pieces fit together." Instead, every time we discover something it's like "What does that mean?"
DAVID EAGLEMAN
"Think Big: Neuroscientist David Eagleman on What Is Possible in the Cosmos", Smithsonian, April 29, 2016
Assessing existence while failing to embrace the insights of modern physics would be like wrestling in the dark with an unknown opponent.
BRIAN GREENE
The Fabric of the Cosmos: Space, Time, and the Texture of Reality
Physics was prose: elegant gymnastics for the mind, mirror of Creation, the key to man's dominion over the planet.
PRIMO LEVI
The Periodic Table
Even in an era of targeted experimentation and daunting theoretical prowess enhanced by large-scale computing, many-body physics is still a humbling natural science based on discovery.
NATHAN GEMELKE
"Viewpoint: A Close Look at the Fermi-Hubbard Model", Physics, April 25, 2016
Physics is more than a part of the physical sciences. It is the basic science. It is about the nature of basic things such as motion, forces, energy, matter, heat, sound, light and the insides of atoms.
K. K. MOHINDROO
Basic Principles of Physics
Physics is really nothing more than a search for ultimate simplicity, but so far all we have is a kind of elegant messiness.
BILL BRYSON
A Short History of Nearly Everything
As soon as we venture on the paths of the physicist, we learn to weigh and measure, to deal with time and space and mass and their related concepts, and to find more and more our knowledge expressed and our needs satisfied through the concept of number, as in the dreams of Plato and Pythagoras.
D'ARCY WENTWORTH THOMPSON
On Growth and Form
Physics is the Supreme Court of the sciences.
DAVE MAIULLO
"Review: 'That Physics Show,' Where Newton Meets Nitrogen", New York Times, April 7, 2016
Physics is like sex: sure, it may give some practical results, but that's not why we do it.
RICHARD FEYNMAN
attributed, Mad about Physics