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The behavior of large and complex aggregates of elementary particles, it turns out, is not to be understood in terms of a simple extrapolation of a few particles. Instead, at each level of complexity entirely new properties appear, and the understanding of the new behaviors requires research which I think is as fundamental in its nature as any other.

— Philip Warren Anderson More Is Different (1972)

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More quotes by Philip Warren Anderson

All I can say to the younger theorists is: don’t trust anyone over 45, except maybe me, and I’m not so sure about me.”

More and Different: Notes from a Thoughtful Curmudgeon (2011)

Surely there are more levels of organization between human ethology and DNA than there are between DNA and quantum electrodynamics, and each level can require a whole new conceptual structure.

More Is Different (1972)

“Of course I am not religious—I don’t in fact see how any scientist who thinks at all deeply can be so ...”

More and Different: Notes from a Thoughtful Curmudgeon (2011)

My belief is based on the fact that string theory is the first science in hundreds of years to be pursued in pre-Baconian fashion, without any adequate experimental guidance.

“We atheists can . . . argue that, with the modern revolution in attitudes toward homosexuals, we have become the only group that may not reveal itself in normal social discourse”.

More and Different: Notes from a Thoughtful Curmudgeon (2011)

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Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Philip Warren Anderson (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.