Quotes from Arthur Eddington

It is one thing for the human mind to extract from the phenomena of nature the laws which it has itself put into them; it may be a far harder thing to extract laws over which it has no control.

Science is one thing, wisdom is another. Science is an edged tool, with which men play like children, and cut their own fingers.

What we makes of the world must be largely dependent on the sense-organs that we happen to possess. How the world must have changed since the man came to rely on his eyes rather than his nose.

Shuffling is the only thing which Nature cannot undo.

Schrödinger's wave-mechanics is not a physical theory, but a dodge - and a very good dodge too.

It is reasonable to hope that in the not too distant future we shall be competent to understand so simple a thing as a star.

If your theory is found to be against the second law of thermodynamics I give you no hope; there is nothing for it but to collapse in deepest humiliation.

I ask you to look both ways. For the road to a knowledge of the stars leads through the atom; and important knowledge of the atom has been reached through the stars.

Proof is an idol before which the mathematician tortures himself.

Something unknown is doing we don't know what-that is what our theory amounts to.

We used to think that if we knew one, we knew two, because one and one are two. We are finding that we must learn a great deal more about 'and'.

The electron, as it leaves the atom, crystallises out of Schrodinger's mist like a genie emerging from his bottle.

We have found that where science has progressed the farthest, the mind has but regained from nature that which the mind put into nature.

Proof is an idol before whom the pure mathematician tortures himself.

Human life is proverbially uncertain; few things are more certain than the solvency of a life-insurance company.

The quest of the absolute leads into the four-dimensional world.

Oh leave the Wise our measures to collate. One thing at least is certain, light has weight. One thing is certain and the rest debate. Light rays, when near the Sun, do not go straight.

If your theory is found to be against the second law of theromodynamics, I give you no hope; there is nothing for it but to collapse in deepest humiliation.

We have found that where science has progressed the farthest, the mind has but regained from nature that which the mind put into nature.

For the truth of the conclusions of physical science, observation is the supreme Court of Appeal.

I hope it will not shock experimental physicists too much if I say that we do not accept their observations unless they are confirmed by theory.

Whether in the intellectual pursuits of science or in the mystical pursuits of the spirit, the light beckons ahead, and the purpose surging in our nature responds.

It is impossible to trap modern physics into predicting anything with perfect determinism because it deals with probabilities from the outset.

So far as physics is concerned, time's arrow is a property of entropy alone.