Daniel Bernoulli Quotes

The paradigm of physics - with its interplay of data, theory and prediction - is the most powerful in science.

Most of us who become experimental physicists do so for two reasons; we love the tools of physics because to us they have intrinsic beauty, and we dream of finding new secrets of nature as important and as exciting as those uncovered by our scientific heroes.

Actually, I was more or less determined to be a theoretical physicist at the age of thirteen.

In physics, all can you do is predict the consequences of physical laws.

Physics is really figuring out how to discover new things that are counterintuitive, like quantum mechanics. It's really counterintuitive.

With the discovery of the Higgs boson, one of the questions has been ticked off the list, but there are many others. We hope that we can find answers or hints for answers to at least some of them. But of course, this is in the hands of nature.

There are physicists, and there are string theorists. Of course the string theorists are physicists, but the string theorists in general will not attend lectures on experimental physics. They will not be terribly concerned about the results of experiments. They will talk to one another.

My background is in theoretical physics, and it's something very close to my heart.

Physics is not a religion. If it were, we’d have a much easier time raising money.

There really is not a new law of nature. It was all in the theory to begin with but nobody worked it out.

All phenomena] are equally susceptible of being calculated, and all that is necessary, to reduce the whole of nature to laws similar to those which Newton discovered with the aid of the calculus, is to have a sufficient number of observations and a mathematics that is complex enough.

There's branches of science which I don't understand; for example, physics. It could be said, I suppose, that I have faith that physicists understand it better than I do.

To a theoretical physicist, there is no greater joy than to see that this curious activity we call calculation - the depositing of ink on paper, followed by throwing away the paper and depositing new ink on more paper - can actually tell us something about reality.

I always wanted to be an experimental physicist and was attracted to the idea of using continuing advances in technology to carry out fundamental science experiments that could not be done otherwise.

Doing physics is a lot of fun if you like it.

I'd really like to go on a date with Stephen Hawking. I just think we'd have really good chat. I'd just like to sit and listen to him.

As you know, a theory in physics is not useful unless it is able to predict underlined effects which we would otherwise expect.

One factor that has remained constant through all the twists and turns of the history of physical science is the decisive importance of the mathematical imagination.

I thought I wanted to be a physicist in high school until I learned that there was much more math than philosophy in it. I assumed I would just sit around all day and think.

This is often the way it is in physics - our mistake is not that we take our theories too seriously, but that we do not take them seriously enough. It is always hard to realize that these numbers and equations we play with at our desks have something to do with the real world. Even worse, there often seems to be a general agreement that certain phenomena are just not fit subjects for respectable theoretical and experimental effort.

I would hope that the publicity around the Higgs boson would increase the public awareness of physics and cosmology.

I'm not a science fiction writer, I'm a physicist. These are scientists who are making the future in their laboratories.

Mathematics is not something that you find lying around in your back yard. It's produced by the human mind. Yet if we ask where mathematics works best, it is in areas like particle physics and astrophysics, areas of fundamental science that are very, very far removed from everyday affairs.

A book on the new physics, if not purely descriptive of experimental work, must essentially be mathematical.

The physicist, in his study of natural phenomena, has two methods of making progress: (1) the method of experiment and observation, and (2) the method of mathematical reasoning. The former is just the collection of selected data; the latter enables one to infer results about experiments that have not been performed. There is no logical reason why the second method should be possible at all, but one has found in practice that it does work and meets with reasonable success.