Monday, March 22, 2010

Words of the wise...

Place three grains of sand inside a vast cathedral, and the cathedral will be more closely packed with sand than space with stars.
 James Jeans

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

In science one tries to tell people, In such a way as to be understood by everyone, something that no one ever knew before.
But in poetry it’s the exact opposite.

The most incomprehensible thing about the universe is that it is comprehensible.
Albert Einstein

Science must begin with myths, and with the criticism of myths.
Karl Popper

 I do not feel obliged to believe that the same god who has endowed us with sense, reason and intellect has intended us to forgo their use.
Galileo Galilei

Living on earth may be expensive but it includes an annual free trip around the sun.
Anonymous

Physics is not a religion. If it were, we would have a much easier time raising money. 
Leon Lederman

Einstein's theory of relativity is probably the greatest synthetic achievement of the human intellect up to the present time.
Bertrand Russell

But the years of anxious searching in the dark for a truth that one feels but cannot express, the intense desire and the alternations of confidence and misgiving, and the final emergence into light - only those who have experienced it can appreciate it.
Albert Einstein

Errors using inadequate data are much less than those using no data at all.
Charles Babbage

Heaven wheels above you displaying to you her eternal glories and still your eyes are on the ground. Dante

Theories crumble but good observations never fade.
Harlow Shapley

The known is finite, the unknown is infinite; intellectually we stand on an islet in the midst of an illimitable ocean of inexplicability. Our business in every generation is to reclaim a little more land. T.H. Huxley

The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not eureka but "that's funny".
Isaac Asimov

In general we look for a new law by the following process. First you guess. Don’t laugh, this is the most important step. Then you compute the consequences. Compare the consequences to experience. If it disagrees with experience, the guess is wrong. In that simple a statement is the key to science. It doesn’t matter how beautiful your guess is or how smart you are or what your name is. If it disagrees with experience, it's wrong. That’s all there is to it.
Richard Feynman


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