From: vijay@wiliki.eng.hawaii.edu (Vijay Fafat)
Subject: Some quotes
Organization: University of Engineering, College of Engineering
Date: Thu, 16 Apr 1992 00:51:45 GMT

Here are some interesting quotes. 



Einstein :

    Quantum mechanics is very impressive but I am convinced God does not play 
dice.
    I have become an obstinate heretic in the eyes of my colleagues. Momentary
success carries more power of conviction than reflections upon principles.
    I must seem like an ostrich who forever burries its head in the relativistic
 sands in order not to face the evil quanta.
    I have little patience with physicists who take a board of wood, look for
its thinnest part and drill a great number of holes where drilling is easy.
    The most incomprehensible thing about the universe is that it is comprehensible.
    God is subtle but surely he is not malicious.
    Formerly, people thought that if matter disappeared from the universe, space
and time would remain. Relativity declares that space and time would disappear 
with matter.

Bohr to Pauli : We all agree that your theory is crazy. The question which 
divides us is whether it is crazy enough.

Freeman Dyson : The ground of Physics is littered with corpses of Unified Theories.

Bohr : Anybody who is not shocked by QM has not understood it.

Wightman : Anybody who is not bothered by the Bell's theorem must have rocks in
his head.

Pauli against Unification : Man will not succeed in joining what God has torn
asunder.

Eddington : Einstein's universe has matter but no motion, De Sitter's model
has motion but no matter.

Asimov : The true delight is in finding out and not in knowing.

Newton : If I have seen further than others, it is by standing on the shoulders 
 of giants.

Johny Nash : There are more questions than answers; and the more I find out, the
less I know.

Hawking : Being famous is really rather a nuisance.

Descartes : I think therefore I am.

Neumann : In Mathematics, you don't understand things; you just get used to them

Issac Rabi (when informed about the Muon) : Who ordered that?

Dirac : The only object of theoretical Physics is to calculate results that can
be compared with experiment. It is quite unnecessary that any satisfying 
description of the whole course of the phenomenon must be given.

Newton : Absolute,true and mathematical time, of itself, and from its own nature
 flows equably without relation to anything external.

St. Augustin : I had a clear idea about what time is till I was asked to explain
 it and ceased to understand it altogether as soon as I began explaining it.

St. Augustin (in reply to "What was God doing before creation?) : He was busy
creating hell for people who ask such questions.

Francis Bacon : All colours will agree in the dark.

Charles Colton : Logic and metaphysics make use of more tools than all the rest
of the Sciences together and they do the least work.

Joseph Joubert : Logic works, Metaphysics contemplates.

Lord Dunsany : Logic, like whiskey, loses its beneficial effects when taken in
too large a quantity.

A critic while commenting on Julian Schwinger's prodigious Math skills : Other people publish to show how to do it. Julian Schwinger publishes to show that only he can do it.

Schwinger's colleague: Schwinger always pretended that everything he wrote was
a direct revelation from the God. You'd be reading along and suddenly there's
2 neutrinoes - a direct revelation from the Lord!

Pauli (when young) : What professor Einstien has just said is not so stupid.

Schwinger, when informed about Parity violation : Gentlemen, we must bow 
before Nature.

Glashow on Schwinger's shyness : He suffers from an uncertainty principle.

Bohr : Tomorrow's going to be wonderful since today, I do not know anything.

Heisenberg : "Uncertainty" is NOT "I don't know". It is "I can't know".  "I am
uncertain" DOES NOT mean "I could be certain"

Hawking on blackholes : Evidently, God not only plays dice but plays blind-
folded, and, at times, throws them where you can't see them.

Hertz on Maxwell's equations : One cannot escape the feeling that these equations have an existence and intelligence of their own; that they are wiser than
we are, wiser even than their discoverers; that we get more out of them than
was originally put into them.

Wheeler : Space-time tells matter how to move, matter tells space-time how to
curve.

Banesh Hoffman on duality : The physicists could but make the best of it, and
went around with woebegone faces sadly complaining that on Mondays,Weds. and
Fris., they must look upon light as a wave;on Tue, thur. and Sat as a particle
.  On Sundays, they just prayed!

From John Barrow's book "World within the world" :
  1st law of thermo. says : you can't win
  2 nd law of thermo says : you can't break even.
  zeroeth law says : you can't even get out of the game!
    Similarly,
  Capitalism is based on the false premise that you can win.
  Socialism ------------------------------  that you can break even.
  Mysticism ------------------------------  taht you can get out of the game (Nirvana)

Mark Kak : A table of random numbers, once printed, requires no errata.


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