Philip Warren Anderson Quotes

Is the universe 'elegant,' as Brian Greene tells us? Not as far as I can tell, not the usual laws of particle physics, anyway. I think I might find the universal principles of String Theory most elegant - if I only knew what they were.

I'm a student of patterns. At heart, I'm a physicist. I look at everything in my life as trying to find the single equation, the theory of everything.

Physics is the most basic part of science and, of course, math. It gives you insight into everything - a foundation, I should say, to understand nature and the universe.

The fundamental laws necessary for the mathematical treatment of a large part of physics and the whole of chemistry are thus completely known, and the difficulty lies only in the fact that application of these laws leads to equations that are too complex to be solved.

From time immemorial, man has desired to comprehend the complexity of nature in terms of as few elementary concepts as possible.

I think my proper response is complete amazement and awe at the universe that we are in, and how it works is just far more complicated than humans will ever properly understand.

In little localized pockets, the universe is capable of building some beautiful complexity.

The Universe in a Nutshell

The laws of nature are constructed in such a way as to make the universe as interesting as possible.

The universe never did make sense; I suspect it was built on government contract.

Another feature that everybody notices about the universe is that it's complex.

From a scientific point of view, our mission is to seek answers to the fundamental questions about the universe. Many are open - we don't know about dark matter, which accounts for a quarter of the universe's matter, nor do we know why there's antimatter.

No one who has understood even a fraction of what science has told us about the universe can fail to be in awe of both the cosmos and of science.

Amazingly when you add life and consciousness to the equation you can actually explain some of the biggest puzzles of science.

I've always been fascinated by physics and cosmology. It gets more and more scary the older you get.

I wouldn't say that 'The Fabric of the Cosmos' is a book on cosmology. Cosmology certainly plays a big part, but the major theme is our ever-evolving understanding of space and time, and what it all means for our sense of reality.

The abstract analysis of the world by mathematics and physics rests on the concepts of space and time.

We endeavor to stuff the universe into the gullet of an aphorism.

There is a strong tendency in explanatory prose to invoke quantities of tension, energy, and whatnot to explain the genesis of pattern. I believe that all such explanations are inappropriate or wrong.

The universe is governed by science. But science tells us that we can't solve the equations, directly in the abstract.

I don't pretend to understand the Universe - it's a great deal bigger than I am.

I'm astounded by people who want to 'know' the universe when it's hard enough to find your way around Chinatown.

Scientists are slowly waking up to an inconvenient truth - the universe looks suspiciously like a fix. The issue concerns the very laws of nature themselves.

But even physics cannot be defined from an atomic topography.

The main reason why people should care about research in fundamental physics is the same reason they care about astronomy and cosmology. People, children, want to know what we're made out of, how it works, and why the universe is the way it is.