Edward Witten Quotes

Ultimately, my Ph.D. is in mathematical physics, focusing on quantum field theory and curved space-time, and I worked with Stephen Hawking.

We're going to need a definitive quantum theory of gravity, which is part of a grand unified theory - it's the main missing piece.

I had two passions when I was a child. First was to learn about Einstein's theory and help to complete his dream of a unified theory of everything. That's my day job. I work in something called string theory. I'm one of the founders of the subject. We hope to complete Einstein's dream of a theory of everything.

There is now a feeling that the pieces of physics are falling into place, not because of any single revolutionary idea or because of the efforts of any one physicist, but because of a flowering of many seeds of theory, most of them planted long ago.

Physics depends on a universe infinitely centred on an equals sign.

If you want to penetrate into the heart of physics, then let yourself be initiated into the mysteries of poetry.

I got into physics through pop science and quantum science and ended up being such a quantum groupie.

Empty space is a boiling, bubbling brew of virtual particles that pop in and out of existence in a time scale so short that you can't even measure them.

Black holes are very exotic objects. Technically, a black hole puts a huge amount of mass inside of zero volume. So our understanding of the center of black holes doesn't make sense, which is a big clue to physicists that we don't have our physics quite right.

When I was in high school, I was really into string theory and superstring theory and read 'Scientific American.' It's fascinating.

I've always really been into science, and in the last five years I've gotten into theoretical physics and the origins of the universe.

There was a long history of speculation that in quantum gravity, unlike Einstein's classical theory, it might be possible for the topology of spacetime to change.

From a theoretical point of view, it is very hard to imagine how gravity could avoid being quantized.

I am not aware of any sensible theory of how classical gravity could interact with quantum matter, and I can't imagine how such a theory might work.

My work on black holes was on the connection between black holes and elementary particles.

My work indicated that if we consider smaller and smaller black holes, at some stage, the properties of black holes become indistinguishable from those of elementary particles.

Quantum field theory, which was born just fifty years ago from the marriage of quantum mechanics with relativity, is a beautiful but not very robust child.

The Europeans and the Americans are not throwing $10 billion down this gigantic tube for nothing. We're exploring the very forefront of physics and cosmology with the Large Hadron Collider because we want to have a window on creation, we want to recreate a tiny piece of Genesis to unlock some of the greatest secrets of the universe.

By having simplified what is known, physicists have been led into realms which as yet are anything but simple. That at some time, they, too, will appear as simple consequences of a theory of which no one has yet dreamed is not a statement of fact.It is a statement of faith.

Very strange people, physicists - in my experience the ones who aren't dead are in some way very ill.

Physics as we know it will be over in six months.

Scientifically speaking, a butterfly is at least as mysterious as a superstring. When something ceases to be mysterious it ceases to be of absorbing interest to scientists. Almost all things scientists think and dream about are mysterious.

I flipped back through the pad of paper while I thought about what Stephen Hawking would do next.

In fact the total amount that a physicist knows is very little. He has only to remember the rules to get him from one place to another and he is all right.

To become a theoretical physicist ... you need to have a passionate love affair with the universe.