51 quotes
Simplicity is part of what I mean by beauty, but it is a simplicity of ideas, not simplicity of a mechanical sort that can be measured by counting equations or symbols.
Almost all of modern cosmology is based on this Robert-Walker metric, at least as a first approximation.
Cosmology (2008)
I expect that sooner or later we will be seeing another departure from the renormalizable Standard Model in the discovery of proton decay, or some other example of baryon nonconservation.
As everyone today knows, in specifying the value of a gauge coupling constant it is necessary to say not only what its value is but where — that is at what normalization scale — it has that value.
In fact, the opportunities for progress lie in just those areas of physics that seem most messy.
Now I realise that many people don't believe in that any more who call themselves Muslims or Jews or Christians, but that is the traditional God and he's a terrible character. I don't like him.
The Atheism Tapes (2004)
There is a hope, which I nurse but I don't see being realized, that eventually we'll find that quantum mechanics as we know it now is just an approximation ...
Maybe at the very bottom of it... I really don't like God.
The Atheism Tapes (2004)
Despite its value to Einstein and Heisenberg, positivism has done as much harm as good. But, unlike the mechanical worldview, positivism has preserved its heroic aura, so that it survives to do damage in the future.
Dreams of a Final Theory (1994)
One of the great achievements of science has been, if not to make it impossible for intelligent people to be religious, then at least to make it possible for them not to be religious. We should not retreat from this accomplishment.
Heisenberg’s starting point was the philosophical judgment, that a physical theory should not concern itself with things like electron orbits in atoms that can never be observed. This is a risky assumption, but in this case it served Heisenberg well.
Lectures on Quantum Mechanics (2012)
Quantum mechanics is not itself a dynamical theory. It is an empty stage. You have to add the actors: You have to specify the space of configurations, an infinite-dimensional complex space, and the dynamical rules for how the state vector rotates in this space as time passes.
Another lesson to be learned, to continue using my oceanographic metaphor, is that while you are swimming and not sinking you should aim for rough water.
Scientist: Four golden lessons (2003)
I think the world needs to wake up from its long nightmare of religious belief; and anything that we scientists can do to weaken the hold of religion should be done, and may in fact be our greatest contribution to civilization.
If you have bought one of those T-shirts with Maxwell's equations on the front, you may have to worry about its going out of style, but not about its becoming false. We will go on teaching Maxwellian electrodynamics as long as there are scientists.
The important thing for the progress of physics is not the decision that a theory is true, but the decision that it is worth taking seriously—worth teaching to graduate students, worth writing textbooks about, above all, worth incorporating into one’s own research.
Dreams of a Final Theory (1992)
Nothing in physics seems so hopeful to me as the idea that it is possible for a theory to have a high degree of symmetry which is hidden from us in ordinary life.
Premature as the question may be, it is hardly possible not to wonder whether we will find any answer to our deepest questions, any signs of the workings of an interested God, in a final theory. I think that we will not.
Dreams of a Final Theory (1993)
Electrons are believed to be absolutely stable, and protons and neutrons (when bound...) live at least 1030 years. With few exceptions, all other particles have very short lifetimes...
The Discovery of Subatomic Particles (1983)
... I hope no students of science today feel there are no worlds left for them to conquer. There are lots of mysteries that are waiting to be conquered.