Physicist Quotes

The secrets of nature are concealed; her agency is perpetual, but we do not always discover its effects; time reveals them from age to age; and although she is always the same in herself, she is not always equally well known.

Anyone who found the secret of rejoicing when things go well without being annoyed when they go badly would have found the point.

Nature has made all her truths independent of one another. Our art makes one dependent on the other. But this is not natural. Each keeps its own place.

The past and present are only our means; the future is always our end. Thus we never really live, but only hope to live.

That dog is mine said those poor children; that place in the sun is mine; such is the beginning and type of usurpation throughout the earth.[Fr., Ce chien est a moi, disaient ces pauvres enfants; c'est la ma place au soleil. Voila le commencement et l'image de l'usurpation de toute la terre.]

How shall one who is so weak in his childhood become really strong when he grows older? We only change our fancies.

All men naturally hate each other. We have used concupiscence as best we can to make it serve the common good, but this is mere sham and a false image of charity, for essentially it is just hate.

Extremes are for us as though they were not, and we are not within their notice. They escape us, or we them. This is our true state; this is what makes us incapable of certain knowledge and of absolute ignorance... This is our natural condition, and yet most contrary to our inclination; we burn with desire to find solid ground and an ultimate sure foundation whereon to build a tower reaching to the Infinite. But our whole groundwork cracks, and the earth opens to abysses.

The least movement is of importance to all nature. The entire ocean is affected by a pebble.

Those honor nature well, who teach that she can speak on everything...

Let no one say that I have said nothing new... the arrangement of the subject is new. When we play tennis, we both play with the same ball, but one of us places it better.

It is not only old and early impressions that deceive us; the charms of novelty have the same power.

All this visible world is but an imperceptible point in the ample bosom of nature.

Cold words freeze people, and hot words scorch them, and bitter words make them bitter, and wrathful words make them wrathful. Kind words also produce their own image on men's souls; and a beautiful image it is. They smooth, and quiet, and comfort the hearer.

Those who are accustomed to judge by feeling do not understand the process of reasoning, because they want to comprehend at a glance and are not used to seeking for first principles. Those, on the other hand, who are accustomed to reason from first principles do not understand matters of feeling at all, because they look for first principles and are unable to comprehend at a glance.

Men are so completely fools by necessity that he is but a fool in a higher strain of folly who does not confess his foolishness.

If we examine our thoughts, we shall find them always occupied with the past and the future.

The heart has its reasons of which reason knows nothing.

Imagination is the deceptive part in man, the mistress of error and falsehood.

The strength of a man's virtue should not be measured by his special exertions, but by his habitual acts.

Those are weaklings who know the truth and uphold it as long as it suits their purpose, and then abandon it.

The manner in which Epictetus, Montaigne, and Salomon de Tultie wrote, is the most usual, the most suggestive, the most remembered, and the oftener quoted; because it is entirely composed of thoughts born from the common talk of life.

Who dispenses reputation? Who makes us respect and revere persons, works, laws, the great? Who but this faculty of imagination? All the riches of the earth are inadequate without its approval.

Habit is a second nature, which destroys the first.

Nothing is thoroughly approved but mediocrity. The majority has established this, and it fixes its fangs on whatever gets beyond it either way.

It is not our task to secure the triumph of truth, but merely to fight on its behalf.

Fuller believed human societies would soon rely mainly on renewable sources of energy,such as solar- and wind-derived electricity,. envisioned an age of "universal education and sustenance of all humanity"."The heart has reasons that reason does not understand."

The philosophers talk to you about the dignity of man, and they tempt you to pride, or they talk to you about the misery of man, and they tempt you to despair.

Caesar was too old, it seems to me, to go off and amuse himself conquering the world. Such a pastime was all right for Augustus and Alexander; they were young men, not easily held in check, but Caesar ought to have been more mature.

We only consult the ear because the heart is wanting.

If man made himself the first object of study, he would see how incapable he is of going further. How can a part know the whole?

In proportion as our own mind is enlarged we discover a greater number of men of originality. Commonplace people see no difference between one man and another.

Unable to make what is just strong, we have made what is strong just.

Man is only a reed, the weakest in nature, but he is a thinking reed. There is no need for the whole universe to take up arms to crush him: a vapour, a drop of water is enough to kill him. but even if the universe were to crush him, man would still be nobler than his slayer, because he knows that he is dying and the advantage the universe has over him. The universe knows none of this.

Let each of us examine his thoughts

Tout notre raisonnement se re duit a' ce der au sentiment. All our reasoning comes down to surrendering to feeling.

If man should commence by studying himself, he would see how impossible it is to go further.

There should be in eloquence that which is pleasing and that which is real; but that which is pleasing should itself be real.

We are not satisfied with real life; we want to live some imaginary life in the eyes of other people and to seem different from what we actually are.

It is an appalling thing to feel all one possesses drain away.

We are usually convinced more easily by reasons we have found ourselves than by those which have occurred to others.

It is not from space that I must seek my dignity, but from the government of my thought. I shall have no more if I possess worlds. By space the universe encompasses and swallows me up like an atom; by thought I comprehend the world.

Human life is thus only an endless illusion. Men deceive and flatter each other. No one speaks of us in our presence as he does when we are gone. Society is based on mutual hypocrisy.

If they [Plato and Aristotle] wrote about politics it was as if to lay down rules for a madhouse. And if they pretended to treat it as something really important it was because they knew that the madmen they were talking to believed themselves to be kings and emperors. They humored these beliefs in order to calm down their madness with as little harm as possible.

In each action we must look beyond the action at our past, present, and future state, and at others whom it affects, and see the relations of all those things. And then we shall be very cautious.

An advocate who has been well paid in advance will find the cause he is pleading all the more just.

What a strange vanity painting is; it attracts admiration by resembling the original, we do not admire.

The present is never the mark of our designs. We use both past and present as our means and instruments, but the future only as our object and aim.

A mere trifle consoles us, for a mere trifle distresses us.

Discourses on humility are a source of pride in the vain and of humility in the humble.

Opinion is the queen of the world.

Small minds are concerned with the extraordinary, great minds with the ordinary.

Ugly deeds are most estimable when hidden.

Earnestness is enthusiasm tempered by reason.

Equality of possessions is no doubt right, but, as men could not make might obey right, they have made right obey might.

Love has no age as it is always renewing itself.

Continued eloquence is wearisome.

We run heedlessly into the abyss after putting something in front of us to stop us from seeing it.

All the excesses, all the violence, and all the vanity of great men, come from the fact that they know not what they are: it being difficult for those who regard themselves at heart asequal with all men... For this it is necessary for one to forget himself, and to believe that he has some real excellence above them, in which consists this illusion that I am endeavoring todiscover to you.

Imagination cannot make fools wise, but it makes them happy, as against reason, which only makes its friends wretched: one covers them with glory, the other with shame.