| Quote | Author | Date | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
Give me but one firm spot on which to stand, and I will move the earth. |
Archimedes | c. 287 – c. 212 BC | In reference to a lever : Knowles, E. (1999). The Oxford dictionary of quotations. Oxford: Oxford University Press. |
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 | born 1951 | A Short History of Nearly Everything |
I stress that the universe is made mostly of nothing, that something is the exception. |
Carl Sagan | 1934 – 1996 | The Varieties of Scientific Experience: A Personal View of the Search for God (2006) |
A stitch in time would have confused Einstein. |
Unknown | ||
Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler. |
Albert Einstein | 1879 – 1955 | |
All bodies together, and each by itself, give off to the surrounding air an infinite number of images which are all-pervading and each complete, each conveying the nature, colour and form of the body which produces it. |
Leonardo da Vinci | 1452 – 1519 | |
There was a young lady named Bright, Whose speed was far faster than light; She set out one day In a relative way And returned on the previous night. |
Arthur Buller | 1874 – 1944 | Knowles, E. (1999). The Oxford dictionary of quotations. Oxford: Oxford University Press. |
The equation is smarter than I am. |
Paul Dirac | 1902 – 1984 | On his equation that predicted the existance of antiparticles |
Space is what keeps everything from being in the same place. And time is what keeps everything from happening at once. |
Unknown | ||
[Quantum mechanics] describes nature as absurd from the point of view of common sense. And yet it fully agrees with experiment. So I hope you can accept nature as She is – absurd. |
Richard P. Feynman | 1918 – 1988 | |
The religious idea of God cannot do full duty for the metaphysical infinity. |
Alan W. Watts | 1915 – 1973 | |
Nature never breaks her own laws. |
Leonardo da Vinci | 1452 – 1519 | |
You don’t like it? Go somewhere else. To another universe, where the rules are simpler; philosophically more pleasing, more psychologically easy. |
Richard P. Feynman | 1918 – 1988 | |
There is only one kind of stuff in the universe and it is physical. Out of this stuff comes minds, beauty, emotions, moral values – in short the full gamut of phenomena that gives richness to human life. |
Julian Baggini | born 1968 | |
If one has really technically penetrated a subject, things that previously seemed in complete contrast, might be purely mathematical transformations of each other. |
John von Neumann | 1903 – 1957 | |
Physics is like sex: sure, it may give some practical results, but that’s not why we do it. |
Richard P. Feynman | 1918 – 1988 | |
Our model of the cosmos must be as inexhaustible as the cosmos. A complexity that includes not only duration but creation, not only being but becoming, not only geometry but ethics. It is not the answer we are after, but only how to ask the question. |
Ursula K. Le Guin | born 1929 | The Dispossessed (1974) |
Philosophers keep out. Work in progress. |
Niels Bohr | 1885 – 1962 | A notice pinned to physisit Niels Bohr’s laboratory door. |
It is impossible to explain honestly the beauties of the laws of nature in a way that people can feel, without their having some deep understanding of mathematics. I am sorry, but this seems to be the case. |
Richard P. Feynman | 1918 – 1988 | The Character of Physical Law |
That all things are changed, and that nothing really perishes, and that the sum of matter remains exactly the same, is sufficiently certain. |
Francis Bacon | 1561 – 1626 | Knowles, E. (1999). The Oxford dictionary of quotations. Oxford: Oxford University Press. |
Energy is liberated matter, matter is energy waiting to happen. |
Bill Bryson | born 1951 | A Short History of Nearly Everything |
Physics is to math what sex is to masturbation. |
Richard P. Feynman | 1918 – 1988 | |
Nature is the source of all true knowledge. She has her own logic, her own laws, she has no effect without cause nor invention without necessity. |
Leonardo da Vinci | 1452 – 1519 | |
There is only one sort of stuff, namely matter – the physical stuff of physics, chemistry, and physiology. |
Daniel C. Dennett | born 1942 | |
The laws of physics have conspired to make the collisions of atoms produce plants, kangaroos, insects and us. |
Richard Dawkins | born 1941 |