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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.

— Steven Weinberg Lectures on Quantum Mechanics (2012)

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More quotes by Steven Weinberg

Elementary particles are terribly boring, which is one reason why we're so interested in them.

The more the universe seems comprehensible, the more it also seems pointless.

Dreams of a Final Theory: The Search for the Fundamental Laws of Nature (1993)

The effort to understand the universe is one of the very few things which lifts human life a little above the level of farce and gives it some of the grace of tragedy.

The First Three Minutes (1977)

It seems that scientists are often attracted to beautiful theories in the way that insects are attracted to flowers — not by logical deduction, but by something like a sense of smell.

Today for real mystery one has to look to cosmology and elementary particle physics.

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