Quotes on Physicist

The temptation to believe that the Universe is the product of some sort of design, a manifestation of subtle aesthetic and mathematical judgment, is overwhelming. The belief that there is "something behind it all" is one that I personally share with, I suspect, a majority of physicists.

Failure is success in progress

I think physicists are the Peter Pans of the human race. They never grow up and they keep their curiosity.

It takes so long to train a physicist to the place where he understands the nature of physical problems that he is already too old to solve them.

A person who never made a mistake never tried anything new.

Mathematics compares the most diverse phenomena and discovers the secret analogies that unite them.

Put your hand on a hot stove for a minute and it seems like an hour. Sit with a pretty girl for an hour, and it seems like a minute.

The one experience that I hope every student has at some point in their lives is to have some belief you profoundly, deeply hold, proved to be wrong because that is the most eye-opening experience you can have, and as a scientist, to me, is the most exciting experience I can ever have.

Physics is an otherworld thing, it requires a taste for things unseen, even unheard of- a high degree of abstraction... These faculties die off somehow when you grow up... profound curiosity happens when children are young. I think physicists are the Peter Pans of the human race... Once you are sophisticated, you know too much- far too much. Pauli once said to me, "I know a great deal. I know too much. I am a quantum ancient.".

To produce a really good biological theory one must try to see through the clutter produced by evolution to the basic mechanisms lying beneath them, realizing that they are likely to be overlaid by other, secondary mechanisms. What seems to physicists to be a hopelessly complicated process may have been what nature found simplest, because nature could only build on what was already there.

It startled him even more when just after he was awarded the Galactic Institute's Prize for Extreme Cleverness he got lynched by a rampaging mob of respectable physicists who had finally realized that the one thing they really couldn't stand was a smart-ass.

After that cancellation [of the Superconducting Super Collider in Texas, after $2 billion had been spent on it], we physicists learned that we have to sing for our supper. ... The Cold War is over. You can't simply say "Russia!" to Congress, and they whip out their checkbook and say, "How much?" We have to tell the people why this atom-smasher is going to benefit their lives.

The dog is very smart. He feels sorry for me because I receive so much mail; that's why he tries to bite the mailman.

Like no other science, astrophysics cross-pollinate s the expertise of chemists, biologists, geologists and physicists, all to discover the past, present, and future of the cosmos-and our humble place within it.

Anyone who has a child today should train him to be either a physicist or a ballet dancer. Then he'll escape.

Study hard what interests you the most in the most undisciplined, irreverent and original manner possible.

The release of atomic energy has not created a new problem. It has merely made more urgent the necessity of solving an existing one.

If I were not a physicist, I would probably be a musician. I often think in music. I live my daydreams in music. I see my life in terms of music.

The optimist thinks this is the best of all possible worlds. The pessimist fears it is true.

Physicists are more like avant-garde composers, willing to bend traditional rules... Mathematicians are more like classical composers.

Only a life lived for others is a life worthwhile.