Quotes About Physics

[Physicists] feel that the field of bacterial viruses is a fine playground for serious children who ask ambitious questions.

One can't prove that God doesn't exist. But science makes God unnecessary. The laws of physics can explain the universe without the need for a creator.

One aim of physical sciences had been to give an exact picture the material world. One achievement of physics in the twentieth century has been to prove that that aim is unattainable.

But 'the physical level of rigor' is higher on certainty than the logical one, since reproducible experiments are more reliable than anybody's, be it Hilbert's, Einstein's or Gödel's intuition.

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.

For those who want some proof that physicists are human, the proof is in the idiocy of all the different units which they use for measuring energy.

What is especially striking and remarkable is that in fundamental physics a beautiful or elegant theory is more likely to be right than a theory that is inelegant.

Modern science cannot explain why the laws of physics are exactly balanced for animal life to exist.

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

There exists for every liquid a temperature at which no amount of pressure is sufficient to retain it in the liquid form.

The lesson of the book is that the universe is governed by the laws of science.

The law of conservation of energy tells us we can't get something for nothing, but we refuse to believe it.

That which is not measurable is not science. That which is not physics is stamp collecting.

If a problem is clearly stated, it has no further interest to the physicist.

Nothing is accidental in the universe - this is one of my Laws of Physics - except the entire universe itself, which is Pure Accident, pure divinity.

The discontinuous 'reduction of the wave packets' which cannot be derived from Schroedinger's equation is ... a consequence of the transition from the possible to the actual.

Computer science is to biology what calculus is to physics. It's the natural mathematical technique that best maps the character of the subject.

I should consider that I know nothing about physics if I were able to explain only how things might be, and were unable to demonstrate that they could not be otherwise.

Our job in physics is to see things simply, to understand a great many complicated phenomena in a unified way, in terms of a few simple principles.

Proposition VIII. When two Undulations, from different Origins, coincide either perfectly or very nearly in Direction, their joint effect is a Combination of the Motions belonging to each.

Whereas Nature does not admit of more than three dimensions ... it may justly seem very improper to talk of a solid ... drawn into a fourth, fifth, sixth, or further dimension.

Classical physics has been superseded by quantum theory: quantum theory is verified by experiments. Experiments must be described in terms of classical physics.

There could be whole antiworlds and antipeople made out of antiparticles. However, if you ever meet your antiself, don't shake hands! You would both vanish in a great flash of light.

Anyone who believes that the laws of physics are mere social conventions is invited to try transgressing those conventions from the windows of my apartment. (I live on the twenty-first floor).