#Physics Quotes

“Even the most eminent persons are subject to the laws of gravity.”

“If your car could travel at the speed of light, would your headlights work?”

“The atom cannot disobey the law. Whether it is the mental or the physical atom, it must obey the law. "What is the use of [external restraint]?"”

“OK, so what's the speed of dark?”

“If you are in a spaceship that is traveling at the speed of light, and you turn on the headlights, does anything happen?”

“Weight, force and casual impulse, together with resistance, are the four external powers in which all the visible actions of mortals have their being and their end.”

“Inequality is the cause of all local movements.”

“A wave is never found alone, but is mingled with as many other waves as there are uneven places in the object where the said wave is produced.”

“Motion is created by the destruction of balance.”

“I assert that, in any particular natural science, one encounters genuine scientific substance only to the extent that mathematics is present.”

“In every department of physical science there is only so much science, properly so-called, as there is mathematics.”

“A crumb is a great thing: If you break a crumb in half, you don't get two half-crumbs, you get two crumbs. Doesn't that violate some law of physics?”

“It is perhaps just dawning on five or six minds that physics, too, is only an interpretation and exegesis of the world (to suit us, if I may say so!) and not a world-explanation.”

“In the matter of physics, the first lessons should contain nothing but what is experimental and interesting to see. A pretty experiment is in itself often more valuable than twenty formulae extracted from our minds.”

“Either CS (coordinate system) could be used with equal justification. The two sentences: the sun is at rest and the earth moves, or the sun moves and the earth is at rest, would simply mean two different conventions concerning two different CS”

“The faster you go, the shorter you are.”

“The special theory of relativity owes its origins to Maxwell's equations of the electromagnetic field.”

“In quitting this strange world he has once again preceded me by a little. That doesn't mean anything. For those of us who believe in physics, this separation between past, present, and future is only an illusion, however tenacious.”

“Physics is an attempt conceptually to grasp reality as something that is considered to be independent of its being observed. In this sense one speaks of physical reality.”

“There is no place in this new kind of physics both for the field and matter, for the field is the only reality.”

“What physics looks for: The simplest possible system of thought which will bind together the observed facts.”

“I was just more stubborn and more passionate than most about physics.”

“Physics is a good framework for thinking. ... Boil things down to their fundamental truths and reason up from there.”

“Physics is really figuring out how to discover new things that are counterintuitive, like quantum mechanics. It's really counterintuitive.”

“I think you should always bear in mind that entropy is not on your side.”

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

“Magnetism is one of the Six Fundamental Forces of the Universe, with the other five being Gravity, Duct Tape, Whining, Remote Control, and The Force That Pulls Dogs Toward The Groins Of Strangers.”

“[Max Planck] was one of the finest people I have ever known... but he really didn't understand physics, [because] during the eclipse of 1919 he stayed up all night to see if it would confirm the bending of light by the gravitational field. If he had really understood [general relativity], he would have gone to bed the way I did”

“Physics is essentially an intuitive and concrete science. Mathematics is only a means for expressing the laws that govern phenomena.”

“It would of course be a great step forward if we succeeded in combining the gravitational field and the electromagnetic field into a single structure. Only so could the era in theoretical physics inaugurated by Faraday and James Clerk Maxwell be brought to a satisfactory close.”

“Time is just something we invented to make motion seem simple.”

“E=mc2. Energy equals mass times the speed of light squared. The original statement is: If a body gives off the energy L in the form of radiation, its mass diminishes by L/c2. Ist die Tragheit eines Korpers von Seinem Energieghalt Abhangig? 1905”

“A body in motion can maintain this motion only if it remains in contact with a mover.”

“For any two portions of fire, small or great, will exhibit the same ratio of solid to void; but the upward movement of the greater is quicker than that of the less, just as the downward movement of a mass of gold or lead, or of any other body endowed with weight, is quicker in proportion to its size.”

“What lead me more or less directly to the special theory of relativity was the conviction that the electromotive force acting on a body in motion in a magnetic field was nothing else but an electric field.”

“...The entire preoccupation of the physicist is with things that contain within themselves a principle of movement and rest.”

“It is clear, then, that the earth must be at the centre and immovable, not only for the reasons already given, but also because heavy bodies forcibly thrown quite straight upward return to the point from which they started, even if they are thrown to an infinite distance. From these considerations then it is clear that the earth does not move and does not lie elsewhere than at the centre.”

“Scientists tell us that the fastest animal in the world, with a speed of 120 mph, is a cow dropped out of a helicopter.”

“The relativity principle in connection with the basic Maxwellian equations demands that the mass should be a direct measure of the energy contained in a body; light transfers mass. With radium there should be a noticeable diminution of mass. The idea is amusing and enticing; but whether the Almighty is laughing at it and is leading me up the garden path -- that I cannot know.”

“Relativity applies to physics, not ethics.”

“The only reason for time is so that everything doesn't happen at once.”

“It followed from the special theory of relativity that mass and energy are both but different manifestations of the same thing - a somewhat unfamiliar conception for the average mind. Furthermore, the equation E = mc², in which energy is put equal to mass, multiplied by the square of the velocity of light, showed that very small amounts of mass may be converted into a very large amount of energy and vice versa.”

“I cannot seriously believe in it [quantum theory] because the theory cannot be reconciled with the idea that physics should represent a reality in time and space, free from spooky actions at a distance [spukhafte Fernwirkungen].”

“If [quantum theory] is correct, it signifies the end of physics as a science.”

“The electrical matter consists of particles extremely subtile, since it can permeate common matter, even the densest metals, with such ease and freedom as not to receive any perceptible resistance.”

“On the left-hand side of the field equation we may add the fundamental tensor guv, multiplied by a universal constant, -λ, at present unknown, without destroying the general covariance.”

“For every one billion particles of antimatter there were one billion and one particles of matter. And when the mutual annihilation was complete, one billionth remained - and that's our present universe.”

“No one must think that Newton’s great creation can be overthrown in any real sense by this [Theory of Relativity] or by any other theory. His clear and wide ideas will for ever retain their significance as the foundation on which our modern conceptions of physics have been built.”

“You see, if the height of the mercury [barometer] column is less on the top of a mountain than at the foot of it (as I have many reasons for believing, although everyone who has so far written about it is of the contrary opinion), it follows that the weight of the air must be the sole cause of the phenomenon, and not that abhorrence of a vacuum, since it is obvious that at the foot of the mountain there is more air to have weight than at the summit, and we cannot possibly say that the air at the foot of the mountain has a greater aversion to empty space than at the top.”

“The electrical matter consists of particles extremely subtile, since it can permeate common matter, even the densest metals, with such ease and freedom as not to receive any perceptible resistance.If anyone should doubt whether the electrical matter passes through the substance of bodies, or only over along their surfaces, a shock from an electrified large glass jar, taken through his own body, will probably convince him.Electrical matter differs from common matter in this, that the parts of the latter mutually attract, those of the former mutually repel each other.”