19 quotes
It is not unscientific to make a guess, although many people who are not in science think it is.
The Character of Physical Law (1965)
You can recognize truth by its beauty and simplicity.
The Character of Physical Law (1965)
Our imagination is stretched to the utmost, not, as in fiction, to imagine things which are not really there, but just to comprehend those things which are there.
The Character of Physical Law (1965)
I think I can safely say that nobody understands quantum mechanics.
The Character of Physical Law (1965)
Nature uses only the longest threads to weave her patterns, so each small piece of her fabric reveals the organization of the entire tapestry.
The Character of Physical Law (1965)
It is impossible, by the way, when picking one example of anything, to avoid picking one which is atypical in some sense.
The Character of Physical Law (1965)
Nature's imagination far surpasses our own.
The Character of Physical Law (1965)
Mathematics is not just a language. Mathematics is a language plus reasoning.
The Character of Physical Law (1965)
If we have confidence in a law, then if something appears to be wrong it can suggest to us another phenomenon.
The Character of Physical Law (1965)
For those who want some proof that physicists are human, the proof is in the idiocy of all the different units which they use for measuring energy.
The Character of Physical Law (1965)
On the infrequent occasions when I have been called upon in a formal place to play the bongo drums, the introducer never seems to find it necessary to mention that I also do theoretical physics.
The Character of Physical Law (1965)
To those who do not know mathematics it is difficult to get across a real feeling as to the beauty, the deepest beauty, of nature. ... If you want to learn about nature, to appreciate nature, it is necessary to understand the language that she speaks in.
The Character of Physical Law (1965)
Therefore psychologically we must keep all the theories in our heads, and every theoretical physicist who is any good knows six or seven different theoretical representations for exactly the same physics.
The Character of Physical Law (1965)
This is the key of modern science and is the beginning of the true understanding of nature. This idea. That to look at the things, to record the details, and to hope that in the information thus obtained, may lie a clue to one or another of a possible theoretical interpretation.
The Character of Physical Law (1965)
A person talks in such generalities that everyone can understand him and it's considered to be some deep philosophy. However, I would like to be very rather more special and I would like to be understood in an honest way, rather than in a vague way.
The Character of Physical Law (1965)
Do not keep saying to yourself, if you can possibly avoid it, "But how can it be like that?" because you will get "down the drain", into a blind alley from which nobody has yet escaped. Nobody knows how it can be like that.
The Character of Physical Law (1965)
Now we have a problem. We can deduce, often, from one part of physics like the law of gravitation, a principle which turns out to be much more valid than the derivation. This doesn't happen in mathematics, that the theorems come out in places where they're not supposed to be!
The Character of Physical Law (1965)
[T]he total amount that a physicist knows is very little. He has only to remember the rules to get him from one place to another...
The Character of Physical Law (1965)
The next question was — what makes planets go around the sun? At the time of Kepler some people answered this problem by saying that there were angels behind them beating their wings and pushing the planets around an orbit. As you will see, the answer is not very far from the truth. The only difference is that the angels sit in a different direction and their wings push inward.
The Character of Physical Law (1965)