15 quotes
The most interesting thing I learned during this time was how small a nuclear warhead was.
Nobel Prize autobiography (1998)
The modern concept of the vacuum of space, confirmed every day by experiment, is a relativistic ether. But we do not call it this because it is taboo.
The great power of science is its ability, through brutal objectivity, to reveal to us truth we did not anticipate. In this it continues to be invaluable, and one of the greatest of human creations.
The world is full of intelligent, well-meaning people who, for one reason or another, did not attend university but are nonetheless well-read and educated.
Nobel Prize autobiography (1998)
Real understanding of a thing comes from taking it apart oneself, not reading about it in a book or hearing about it in a classroom.
Nobel Prize autobiography (1998)
Science has political aspects just like anything else does. And what often happens is the money is flowing in such a way as to discourage innovation.
I slowly became disillusioned with the reductionist ideal of physics, for it was completely clear that the oucome of these experiments was almost always impossible to predict from first principles, yet was right and meaningful...
When a thing gets very, very small, you can't tell the difference between a solid and a liquid. (16:30 in video)
Science is about measurement, dammit — it's not about ideas. (55:20 in video)
If you think, as a Western person, that you are not affected by religious traditions, you are sadly mistaken. (22:30 in video)
It is sobering thought that these missiles were actually deployed in continental Europe in those days and that on at least one occasion, namely the 1973 Arab-Israel war, there was an alert serious enough to leave the commanding officers trembling.
Nobel Prize autobiography (1998)
What we live in, unfortunately, is a time when we are infected by what I call quantum field theory idolatry. (39:30 in video)
I realized that nature is filled with a limitless number of wonderful things which have causes and reasons like anything else but nonetheless cannot be forseen but must be discovered, for their subtlety and complexity transcends the present state of science.
Nobel Prize autobiography (1998)
The reason we believe in relativity today is not because we had a great transition in our beliefs about what should be so. We believe in relativity because we have no choice. It's true — measured to be true.
It has been my experience that good theoretical physics is empowering, in that it enables thinking to take place that would otherwise not occur, and, in its highest form, facilitates experiments that would otherwise not be done.
Emergent Relativity (2003)