Quotessence
Home / Topics / Physics Quotes

Physics Quotes

Browse 1726 quotes about Physics.

Related topics

ScienceLawIfsQuantumLaws Of PhysicsThinkingQuantum PhysicsMathematicsChemistryWorldUniverseKnowsTheoryPhysicistMathWayPeopleBiologyHumansStudyMathematicalModernRealityMenFirstsFactsHas BeensMindParticlesExperimentsIdeasMatterScientistYearsMayQuantum MechanicsShouldMeanProblemBelieveFieldsScience PhysicsMechanicDiscoveryTheoreticalEnergyModern PhysicsSeemsCenturyDoePrinciplesRealSubjectsUnderstandingTryingWantKindSpaceStudentsDifferentLittlesMadeWellsWould BeImportantNaturalNeedsBookGivingLongObjectsSchoolCoursesFundamentalsLooksPhilosophyReasonTermTheoretical PhysicsWholeHardWritingArtAtomsEngineeringHappensInterestingConceptsEquationsFormNuclearPossibilityTwoUniversityAbleBranchesComputerExistenceForceResearchmore

Physics Quotes

“If and when all the laws governing physical phenomena are finally discovered, and all the empirical constants occurring in these laws are finally expressed through the four independent basic constants, we will be able to say that physical science has reached its end, that no excitement is left in further explorations, and that all that remains to a physicist is either tedious work on minor details or the self-educational study and adoration of the magnificence of the completed system. At that stage physical science will enter from the epoch of Columbus and Magellan into the epoch of the National Geographic Magazine!”

ScienceWorkDetailsPhysicsExplorationPhysicistTediousColumbusMagnificenceCompleteNational GeographicMagellanChristopher ColumbusConstantsFerdinand Magellan
Author:George Gamow
Create image

“We have learnt that the exploration of the external world by the methods of physical science leads not to a concrete reality but to a shadow world of symbols, beneath which those methods are unadapted for penetrating. Feeling that there must be more behind, we return to our starting point in human consciousness - the one centre where more might become known. There we find other stirrings, other revelations than those conditioned by the world of symbols... Physics most strongly insists that its methods do not penetrate behind the symbolism. Surely then that mental and spiritual nature of ourselves, known in our minds by an intimate contact transcending the methods of physics, supplies just that... which science is admittedly unable to give.”

ScienceSpiritConsciousnessPhysicsSymbolism
Book:Science and the unseen world
Create image

“He (Comings) has in the past performed successful energy-converting experiments, creating a ringing resonance by injecting certain frequencies into piezo-electric crystals. When the crystal was in resonance with the plenum of space, the power output rose significantly higher than the input. He concluded that, if allowed politically, such discoveries could guide humankind in building a completely clean energy infrastructure -- resonant technologies that allow us to live in harmony with the universal energy field and the Earth.”

ScienceSolutionsPhysicsElectricityResonanceVacuumFree Energy
Book:Breakthrough Power: How Quantum-Leap New Energy Inventions Can Transform Our World
Create image

“In mathematics, in physics, people are concerned with what you say, not with your certification. But in order to speak about social reality, you must have the proper credentials, particularly if you depart from the accepted framework of thinking. Generally speaking, it seems fair to say that the richer the intellectual substance of a field, the less there is a concern for credentials, and the greater is concern for content.”

ScienceIntellectualMathematicsIntelligenceMathPhysicsSelf EducationCredentialsAutodidacticismCredentialism
Author:Noam Chomsky
Create image

“As string theorists march on in their quest for the theory of everything, whilst also leaving a trail of mathematical gems along the way, some traditional physicists were outraged: “Is physics no longer rooted in observations of nature? Or is this theology?” I couldn’t help but notice a striking parallel with the way mathematics became detached from physics during the nineteenth century and, in particular, the outrage that accompanied Cantor’s transfinite set theory and Hilbert’s non-constructive proofs. Was the kind of mathematics that could never be exhibited with real objects actual mathematics, or was it theology? With the benefit of hindsight, we now know that the mathematics flourished like never before during the twentieth century. One can only hope the same thing happens with string theory in the decades to come.”

PhysicsString TheoryTheoretical PhysicsString Theorists
Author:Xi Yin
Create image

“At best he read popular science magazines like the Scientific American he had now, to keep himself up-to-date, in layman's terms, with physics generally. But even then his concentration was marred, for a lifetime's habit made him inconveniently watchful for his own name. He saw it as if in bold. It could leap out at him from an unread double page of small print, and sometimes he could sense it coming before the page turn.”

HumorScienceEgoPhysicsIan Mcewan
Book:Solar
Create image

“For decades, new-energy researchers talked about the possibility of treating a magnet so that its magnetic field would continuously shake or vibrate. On rare occasions, Sweet saw this effect, called self-oscillation, occur in electric transformers. He felt it could be coaxed into doing something useful, such as producing energy. Sweet thought that if he could find the precise way to shake or disturb a magnet's force field, the field would continue to shake by itself. It would be similar to striking a bell and having the bell keep on ringing. Sweet - who said his ideas came to him in dreams - turned for inspiration to his expertise in magnets. He knew magnets could be used to produce electricity, and wanted to see if he could get power out of a magnet by something other than the standard induction process. What Sweet wanted to do was to keep the magnet still and just shake its magnetic field. This shaking, in turn, would create an electric current. One new-energy researcher compares self-oscillation to a leaf on a tree waving in a gentle breeze. While the breeze itself isn't moving back and forth, it sets the leaf into that kind of motion. Sweet thought that if cosmic energy could be captured to serve as the breeze, then the magnetic field would serve as the leaf. Sweet would just have to supply a small amount of energy to set the magnetic field in motion, and space energy would keep it moving.”

ScienceEnergySolutionsPhysicsMagnetismFree EnergyMagnetsMagnetic FieldSelf Oscillation
Book:Breakthrough Power: How Quantum-Leap New Energy Inventions Can Transform Our World
Create image

“Einstein's iconoclasm and unyielding refusal of uncritically accept the common vision of the world are undoubtedly key to his achievements in theoretical physics. The theory of relativity could only have been invented by someone unafraid to reject centuries-old scientific assumptions. He was also remarkably courageous in opposing opponents far more powerful than himself—from the Nazis to the McCarthyites of America's Cold War era. Obrazoburstwo Einsteina i nieustępliwa odmowa bezkrytycznego przyjmowania powszechnej wizji świata są bez wątpienia kluczem do jego dokonań w dziedzinie fizyki teoretycznej. Teoria względności mogła zostać wymyślona tylko przez osobę, która nie bała się odrzucać wielowiekowych założeń naukowych. Był też niezwykle odważny przeciwstawianiu się przeciwnikom o wiele mocniejszych od siebie - od nazistów do makkartystów z czasów zimniej wojny w Ameryce.”

SciencePhysicsEinstein
Author:Daniel Smith - Think Like Einstein
Create image

“إن فكرة الحتمية الفيزيائية التي تسربت للعقل الغربي منذ اكتشف نيوتن قوانين الحركة الميكانيكية ليست مبدأ عالميا يعم جميع ظواهر الطبيعة .. يعرف ذلك علماء ميكانيكا الكم ويعرف ذلك الشخص البسيط الذي يؤمن أن الله يستجيب الدعاء ويعرف أن استيقاظه من النوم كل صباح ليست عملية حتمية من لوازم قوانين الطبيعة ولكنها هبة من الله الذي أراد له أن يحيا يوما آخر!”

PhilosophyScienceReligionPhysicsQuantum PhysicsPhilosophy Of ScienceCausalityMechanics
Book:معادلة الإيمان
Create image

“Att världen är oerhört väl inrättad för att inte minst liv skall uppkomma verkar stå utom allt tvivel. Men hur kan detta vara möjligt om världen i minsta detalj är entydigt bestämds av matematisk nödvändighet? Varför skulle matematiken bry sig om att frambringa en levande värld? Är det inte troligare att matematiken i stället tillåter flera olika möjligheter och att den antropiska principen sedan gör resten?”

ScienceMathematicsPhysicsCosmologyNatural Science
Book:Stjärnor och äpplen som faller: En bok om upptäckter och märkvärdigheter i universum
Create image

“Gone are the days—as recent as the first half of the twentieth century—when a genius like Italian physicist Enrico Fermi could propose a new theory of the weak interactions, then turn around and guide the construction of the first self-sustained artificial nuclear chain reaction”

SciencePhysics
Book:The Particle at the End of the Universe: How the Hunt for the Higgs Boson Leads Us to the Edge of a New World
Create image

“To be honest, physicists don’t react with unalloyed approval when I tell them about The Particle at the End of the Universe. As far as we know there isn’t any “end” to the universe, either at some location in space or at some future moment in time. And if there were a location where the universe could be said to end, there’s no reason to think you would find a particle there. And if you did, there’s no reason to think it would be the Higgs boson.”

SciencePhysics
Book:The Particle at the End of the Universe: How the Hunt for the Higgs Boson Leads Us to the Edge of a New World
Create image

“Atoms, the building blocks of so-called matter, however much they might seem to be physically circumscribed, aren’t actually like tiny billiard balls. That’s kindergarten science. From a shamanic or alchemical perspective, atoms are more like sentient waves, their intelligently responsive existence a blur of potential until they magically appear to materialize.”

ScienceIllusionPhysicsMaterialismAtomsQuantumPhysicalityEmpiricismAtomSimulation Theory
Book:Get Out of Here Alive: Inner Alchemy & Immortality
Create image

“Put it this way. If you or I were to build a machine, we'd go about it logically, with the fewest necessary parts moving in clean, efficient ways. But living nature doesn't work that way at all. It builds via the most fantastic redundancies and curlicues, millions of little variations around a theme, so that if three-quarters go haywire, life survives. The results are Rube Goldberg devices, but sturdy Rube Goldberg devices, unimaginably weird and densely layered Rube Goldberg devices, literally unimaginable in that our brains aren't adequate to comprehend the sort of microscopic megacities hidden within the tiniest cell. I thought that was neat.”

LifeScienceMathPhysicsBiologyCells In Our Body
Book:All the Beauty in the World: The Metropolitan Museum of Art and Me
Create image

“We provided the frame from which scientists can prove that matter is a construct, program, and “instruction” of the Universal Mind and that the same program predetermines our perception. Our understanding of the world is contingent upon our experience, cognition, and perception (tertiary quality in my system of thought), which is contingent upon the secondary in my system of thought (originally, primary quality) since there is no matter as we perceive it or conceptualize it. There is no matter as such.”

SciencePhysicsDejan StojanovicAbsoluteUniversal MindBig BangBlack HolesStephen HawkingNo Boundary Proposal
Book:ABSOLUTE
Create image

“Greek atomists Leucippus, his pupil Democritus, and other metaphysicians knew that the world was not how people saw and perceived it. If they understood atoms even then, the indivisible particles, not modern new atoms, we must believe that they understood much more. If they knew that every sense and sensation is a convention, they could have understood that space and time are conventions, too. Regardless of not thoroughly understanding or elaborating on these concepts, they understood that the world must be something different from what is experienced by the senses or how the senses understand it. If Everything is by a convention of senses, then senses can represent things differently; that is why the eye watches, not the ear. If Everything is a convention, then Everything we experience by senses must be relative.”

SciencePhysicsAtomsDejan StojanovicAbsoluteParticlesDemocritusPhislophyLeucippus
Book:ABSOLUTE
Create image

“Maybe Democritus did not understand that matter, as a convention or the world of atoms that makes the whole Universe, including our brain, which “rules” the senses and cognition, is the same convention. However, an atom is a convention. The World is a Convention of the Absolute. The conventions must be relative; only the Absolute is unconventional, but only by and through conventions are the world and life possible.”

PhilosophyScienceUniversePhysicsAtomsConventionsDejan StojanovicAbsoluteDemocritus
Book:ABSOLUTE
Create image

“The strength of the familiar electromagnetic force between two electrons, for example, is expressed in physics in terms of a constant known as the fine structure constant. The value of this constant, almost exactly 1/137, has puzzled many generations of physicists. A joke made about the famous English physicist Paul Dirac (1902-1984), one of the founders of quantum mechanics, says that upon arrival to heaven he was allowed to ask God one question. His question was: "Why 1/137?”

HeavenPhysicsQuantum MechanicsHistory Of ScienceFine Structure Constant
Book:The Golden Ratio: The Story of Phi, the World's Most Astonishing Number
Create image

“But laws of physics and mathematics are like a coordinate system that runs only in one dimension. Perhaps there is another dimension perpendicular to it, invisible to those laws of physics, describing the same things with different rules, and those rules are written in our hearts, in a deep place where we cannot go and read them except in our dreams.”

HeartDreamsMathematicsPhysics
Book:The Diamond Age, or, A Young Lady's Illustrated Prime
Create image

“To reach the truth, it must be at the absolute level. But does the absolute truth exist, and what does it mean? Do ideas represent truths? To what extent do ideas represent truths? These questions mostly relate to society and abstract or concrete questions concerning ethics, aesthetics, psychology, philosophy, and religion. Exact sciences are based on and governed by different standards and concepts of truth or ideas about the truth. Regardless of this dichotomy, it is only a dichotomy on the surface. Deep down, the absolute truth is at the equidistance from all these essential points, or all approaches, regardless of their origin (based on purely theoretical thought or conclusion resulting from an experiment), provided that all these approaches have equal merit based on the intrinsic value of any particular endeavor or approach.”

WorldRealityTruthUniversePhysicsExperimentsDejan StojanovicAbsolute
Book:ABSOLUTE
Create image

“When I am carrying an object such as a ruler, and moving fast compared to you, my ruler will be measured by you to be smaller than it is for me. I might measure it to be 10 cm, say: [Image] But to you, it might appear to be merely 6 cm: [Image] Surely, this is an illusion, you might say, because how could the same object have two different lengths? The atoms can’t be compressed together for you, but not for me. Once again, we return to the question of what is “real.” If every measurement you can perform on my ruler tells you it is 6 cm long, then it is 6 cm long. “Length” is not an abstract quantity but requires a measurement. Since measurement is observer dependent, so is length. To see this is possible while illuminating another of relativity’s slippery catch-22s, consider one of my favorite examples. Say I have a car that is twelve feet long, and you have a garage that is eight feet deep. My car will clearly not fit in your garage: [Image] But, relativity implies that if I am driving fast, you will measure my car to be only, say, six feet long, and so it should fit in your garage, at least while the car is moving: [Image] However, let’s view this from my vantage point. For me, my car is twelve feet long, and your garage is moving toward me fast, and it now is measured by me to be not eight feet deep, but rather four feet deep: [Image] Thus, my car clearly cannot fit in your garage. So which is true? Clearly my car cannot both be inside the garage and not inside the garage. Or can it? Let’s first consider your vantage point, and imagine that you have fixed big doors on the front of your garage and the back of your garage. So that I don’t get killed while driving into it, you perform the following. You have the back door closed but open the front door so my car can drive in. When it is inside, you close the front door: [Image] However, you then quickly open the back door before the front of my car crashes, letting me safely drive out the back: [Image] Thus, you have demonstrated that my car was inside your garage, which of course it was, because it is small enough to fit in it. However, remember that, for me, the time ordering of distant events can be different. Here is what I will observe. I will see your tiny garage heading toward me, and I will see you open the front door of the garage in time for the front of my car to pass through. I will then see you kindly open the back door before I crash: [Image] After that, and after the back of my car is inside the garage, I will see you close the front door of your garage: [Image] As will be clear to me, my car was never inside your garage with both doors closed at the same time because that is impossible. Your garage is too small. “Reality” for each of us is simply based on what we can measure. In my frame the car is bigger than the garage. In your frame the garage is bigger than my car. Period. The point is that we can only be in one place at one time, and reality where we are is unambiguous. But what we infer about the real world in other places is based on remote measurements, which are observer dependent.”

RealitySciencePhysicsRelativity
Book:The Greatest Story Ever Told—So Far: Why Are We Here?
Create image

“Some people turn to religion or some other ideology or belief system to find answers to life’s mysteries. But for me, there is no substitute for the careful hypothesising, testing, and deducing of facts about the world that are the hallmark of the scientific method. The understanding we have gained through science—and physics in particular—of how the world is made up and how it works is, in my view, not just one of many equally valid ways of reaching the ‘truth’ about reality. It is the only reliable way we have.”

LifeRealityScienceUniverseExistencePhysicsThetruth
Book:The World According to Physics
Create image

“Einstein’s revelations disclosed the mind-boggling truth that spirituality had been alluding to for millennia: The material reality we perceive is essentially non-physical. Yet the sciences have still not grasped the most profound implications of this fact. Physicists insist there must be even smaller particles to be found that will somehow bring their ledgers to account, making the forces in their theories correctly add up. Like other belief systems, science is based on faith in the firm physicality of the universe, expediently disregarding that, ultimately, it is not.”

RealityTruthScienceFaithSpiritualityUniversePhysicsParticlesPhysicalMaterial
Author:Debra Gavant
Create image

“Light takes eight minutes to travel from the sun to Earth, so if you look at it one way there’s a grace period between when the star stops burning and when the light runs out. But if you look at the first moment without light as the first possible information heralding the end of the star, there’s no time in between the star’s collapse and the light running out. The eight minutes carry the moment of collapse on their backs.”

LightSpaceSunTravelMathPhysicsTime TravelApocalypseOuter SpaceSolar System
Book:Singer Distance
Create image