What Do These Famous Quotes Reveal About the Minds of Great Scientists?

[Silicon Waffle]

Yo mama

I thought it was you!

 

[Monsterboy]

 

[Rubidium_71]

"I don't want to believe, I want to know." - Carl Sagan

 

[davideddy928]

I thought it was you!

I'm my own scientist. That's what I'd say. I should give up physics and be a comedian

 

[Silicon Waffle]

I'm my own scientist. That's what I'd say. I should give up physics and be a comedian

What types of comedy would you want to enter ? Where and how to find the audience ?...

 

[davideddy928]

Here's to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They're not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can't do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.

 

[Giant]

There was this quote by someone. I don't remember by who and I don't remember the exact words either. It was something like we don't know the universe as the universe is, we know it as we have questioned it. Meaning, our understanding is as good as our ability to ask questions. If anyone knows what it was exactly,, please tell me :)

 

[Hornbein]

There was this quote by someone. I don't remember by who and I don't remember the exact words either. It was something like we don't know the universe as the universe is, we know it as we have questioned it. Meaning, our understanding is as good as our ability to ask questions. If anyone knows what it was exactly,, please tell me :)

I often feel that way about the Internet. I think, "show me some interesting fact, damn it, that I have no inkling of!" No response.

 

[Demystifier]

When all think alike, no one thinks very much.
Walter Lippmann

The point of philosophy is to start with something so simple as not to seem worth stating, and to end with something so paradoxical that no one will believe it.
Bertrand Russell

 

[Demystifier]

No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical.
Niels Bohr

How wonderful that we have met with a paradox. Now we have some hope of making progres.
Niels Bohr

 

[ujjwal3097]

Imagination is bigger than knowledge
Albert Einstein

 

[Hornbein]

Young man, in mathematics you don't understand things. You just get used to them. -- John von Neumann

 

[Demystifier]

There is nothing so practical as a good theory.
- Kurt Lewin

There is nothing so convincing as a good hand-waving argument.
- Hrvoje Nikolić

 

[epenguin]

The first one is often attributed to Leonid Brezhnev. Though I can't imagine he thought of it himself.

 

[arivero]

What's the difference between an intelligent person and a wise person?
When confronted with a problem which cannot be solved by the standard method, the intelligent person changes the method.
The wise one changes the problem.
Hrvoje Nikolic

This quote looks very much as most of the answers in StackOverflow (and cousins). They always tell the OP to do a different thing instead of the one he is asking help for. Cheap Karma, it seems.

 

[George Jones]

Equations may be universal, but the way we understand them and combine them with other results is very personal.
Christophe Grojean

 

[George Jones]

... scientific research is more honestly reported as a tangle of deduction, induction, and guesswork
Steven Weinberg

 

[Demystifier]

Talking about physical laws without talking about ontology is like talking about legal laws without talking about humans. A professional can do it to make the laws more efficient, but then one can miss what the laws are really about.
- Hrvoje Nikolić

 

[AlexCaledin]

I'll tell you a story. When I was thirteen I met a girl, Arlene. Arlene was my first girlfriend. We went together for many years, at first not so seriously, then more seriously. We fell in love. When I was nineteen we got engaged, and when I was twenty-six we got married. I loved her very deeply. We grew up together. I changed her by imparting to her my point of view, my rationality. She changed me. She helped me a lot. She taught me that one has to be irrational sometimes. That doesn't mean stupid, it just means that there are occasions, situations, you should think about, and others you shouldn't.
...
My rule is, when you are unhappy, think about it. But when you’re happy, don’t. Why spoil it?
...
But with Arlene I was really happy for a while. So I have had it all. After Arlene, the rest of my life didn't have to be so good, you see, because I had already had it all.

Feynman's Rainbow: A Search for Beauty in Physics and in Life
page 158...160

 

[Auto-Didact]

Doing things crazy you have to get used to the idea that crazy might be alright; crazy is alright if it works. - Sir Roger Penrose

 

[Dr Transport]

Feynman giving a lecture:

"Gravity is a weak force" (as a light fixture crashes to the ground) "but it is not negligible..."

 

[dwunder]

Nothing wrong with quoting yourself. Quotes aren't good because of who said them, despite what people may think. The message is the same regardless if Albert Einstein said it or Justin Bieber.

If a credible source is no longer required for pontification, have a seat. I have much to offer. :-D

 

[Auto-Didact]

... scientific research is more honestly reported as a tangle of deduction, induction, and guesswork
Steven Weinberg

The sciences do not try to explain, they hardly try to interpret, they mainly make models. By a model is meant a mathematical construct which, with the addition of certain verbal interpretations, describes observed phenomenon. The justification of such a mathematical construct is solely and precisely that it is expected to work.
- John von Neumann

 

[AlexCaledin]

 

[Casmo]

Really awesome quotes!

 

[AlexCaledin]

One day, about 3:30 in the afternoon, I was walking along the sidewalk opposite the beach at Copacabana past a bar. I suddenly got this treMENdous, strong feeling: "That's just what I want; that'll fit just right. I'd just love to have a drink right now!"
I started to walk into the bar, and I suddenly thought to myself, "Wait a minute! It's the middle of the afternoon. There's nobody here, There's no social reason to drink. Why do you have such a terribly strong feeling that you have to have a drink?"--and I got scared.
I never drank ever again, since then. I suppose I really wasn't in any danger, because I found it very easy to stop. But that strong feeling that I didn't understand frightened me. You see, I get such fun out of thinking that I don't want to destroy this most pleasant machine that makes life such a big kick. It's the same reason that, later on, I was reluctant to try experiments with LSD in spite of my curiosity about hallucinations.

Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! (Adventures of a Curious Character)
page 204

 

[Auto-Didact]

In other words, the axioms of geometry (I do not speak of those of arithmetic) are only definitions in disguise. What, then, are we to think of the question: Is Euclidean geometry true? It has no meaning. We might as well ask if the metric system is true, and if the old weights and measures are false; if Cartesian co-ordinates are true and polar co-ordinates false. One geometry cannot be more true than another; it can only be more convenient.
- Henri Poincaré

 

[Auto-Didact]

I would like to interrupt here to make a remark. The fact that electrodynamics can be written in so many ways - the differential equations of Maxwell, various minimum principles with fields, minimum principles without fields, all different kinds of ways, was something I knew, but I have never understood. It always seems odd to me that the fundamental laws of physics, when discovered, can appear in so many different forms that are not apparently identical at first, but, with a little mathematical fiddling you can show the relationship. An example of that is the Schrödinger equation and the Heisenberg formulation of quantum mechanics. I don't know why this is - it remains a mystery, but it was something I learned from experience.

There is always another way to say the same thing that doesn't look at all like the way you said it before. I don't know what the reason for this is. I think it is somehow a representation of the simplicity of nature. A thing like the inverse square law is just right to be represented by the solution of Poisson's equation, which, therefore, is a very different way to say the same thing that doesn't look at all like the way you said it before. I don't know what it means, that nature chooses these curious forms, but maybe that is a way of defining simplicity. Perhaps a thing is simple if you can describe it fully in several different ways without immediately knowing that you are describing the same thing.
- Richard Feynman

 

[OmCheeto]

"Why is there no Flat Mars Society!?"
---Elon Musk

 

[Auto-Didact]

Mandelbrot, like Prime Minister Churchill before him, promises us not utopia but blood, sweat, toil and tears. If he is right, almost all of our statistical tools are obsolete—least squares, spectral analysis, workable maximum-likelihood solutions, all our established sample theory, closed distributions. Almost without exception, past econometric work is meaningless.
- Paul Cootner

 

[AlexCaledin]

 

[Tom.G]

I often feel that way about the Internet. I think, "show me some interesting fact, damn it, that I have no inkling of!" No response.

That's called Specialization, edit: Echo Chamber, or House-of-Mirrors, /edit: tell me something I already know about. The antidote is called a book, you do not need to know something to find something interesting.

(That would also be the reason Newspapers exist.)

 

[Auto-Didact]

What I have just outlined is what I call a ‘physicist’s history of physics’, which is never correct… a sort of conventionalized myth-story that the physicist tell to their students, and those students tell to their students, and it is not necessarily related to actual historical development, which I do not really know!
- Richard Feynman

 

[AlexCaledin]

 

[Auto-Didact]

He who joyfully marches to music rank and file, has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would surely suffice.
- Einstein