Theoretical Physicist Quotes

“But the personality that finally emerges is largely formed by the environment in which a man happens to find himself during his development, by the structure of the society in which he grows up, by the tradition of that society, and by its appraisal of particular types of behavior.”

“The really good music, whether of the East or of the West, cannot be analyzed.”

“Creative energy is more critical than learning.”

“My primary process of perceiving is muscular and visual.”

“The world as we see it is only the world as we see it. Others may see it differently.”

“I am also convinced that one gains the purest joy from spirited things only when they are not tied in with earning one's livelihood.”

“I refuse to engage in an intellectual battle with an unarmed man.”

“Development of Western science is based on two great achievements: the invention of the formal logical system (in Euclidean geometry) by the Greek philosophers, and the discovery of the possibility to find out causal relationships by systematic experiment (during the Renaissance). In my opinion, one has not to be astonished that the Chinese sages have not made these steps. The astonishing thing is that these discoveries were made at all.”

“If the moon, in the act of completing its eternal way around the earth, were gifted with self-consciousness, it would feel thoroughly convinced that it was traveling its way of its own accord on the strength of a resolution taken once and for all. So would a Being, endowed with higher insight and more perfect intelligence, watching man and his doings, smile about man's illusion that he was acting according to his own free will.”

“Concepts which have proved useful for ordering things easily assume so great an authority over us, that we forget their terrestrial origin and accept them as unalterable facts. They then become labeled as 'conceptual necessities,' etc. The road of scientific progress is frequently blocked for long periods by such errors.”

“I have only two rules which I regard as principles of conduct. The first is: Have no rules. The second is: Be independent of the opinion of others.”

“Am I, or the others crazy?”

“Though our conduct seems so very different from that of the higher animals, the primary instincts are much alike in them and in us.”

“I have never belonged wholeheartedly to country or State, to my circle of friends or even to my own family... Such isolation is sometimes bitter, but I do not regret being cut off from the understanding and sympathy of other men. I lose something by it,to be sure, but I am compensated for it in being rendered independent of the customs, opinions and prejudices of others, and am not tempted to rest my peace of mind upon such shifting foundations.”

“There's a genius in all of us.”

“Formal symbolic representation of qualitative entities is doomed to its rightful place of minor significance in a world where flowers and beautiful women abound.”

“The first and most important necessity is the creation of a modus vivendi with the Arab people.”

“It followed from the special theory of relativity that mass and energy are both but different manifestations of the same thing...”

“It is only men who are free, who create the inventions and intellectual works which to us moderns make life worth while.”

“The only thing that you absolutely have to know, is the location of the library.”

“In the middle of adversity there is great opportunity.”

“No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it.”

“They come into being not through demonstration but through revelation, through the medium of powerful personalities.”

“Politics is a pendulum whose swings between anarchy and tyranny are fueled by perennially rejuvenated illusions.”

“A bartender is just a pharmacist with a limited inventory.”