Philosophy is written in this grand book – I mean the universe – which stands continually open to our gaze, but it cannot be understood unless one first learns to comprehend the language and interpret the characters in which it is written. It is written in the language of mathematics, and its characters are triangles, …
Category Archives: Quotes
The New Colossus
Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,With conquering limbs astride from land to land;Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall standA mighty woman with a torch, whose flameIs the imprisoned lightning, and her nameMother of Exiles. From her beacon-handGlows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes commandThe air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.Keep, ancient lands, your …
Fontenelle on Science
We like to regard as useless what we do not know; it is a kind of revenge; and since mathematics and physics are rather generally unknown, they rather generally pass for useless. The source of their misfortune is plain; they are prickly, wild, and hard to reach …. Such is the destiny of sciences handled …
Teller on Uncertainty
… we have a radioactive substance that emits, on the average, a particle, an alpha particle, once every second on the average. Now, here I have a counter, and I close that counter, so it won’t count, except that I open it for half a second. If, in that half a second, a particle arrives, …
MLK Day 2023
Well, I don’t know what will happen now. We’ve got some difficult days ahead. But it doesn’t matter with me now. Because I’ve been to the mountaintop. And I don’t mind. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I’m not concerned about that now. I just want …
On Living In An Atomic Age, Lewis
In one way we think a great deal too much of the atomic bomb. ‘How are we to live in an atomic age?’ I am tempted to reply: ‘Why, as you would have lived in the sixteenth century when the plague visited London almost every year, or as you would have lived in a Viking …
Mythologists and Theologians
“Mythologists and experimental theologians are needed for the development of a new method of attack” Telegram to Meyer while in trenches after recovery which was mistranslated from “Meteorologists and experimental physicists,” where Meyer then traveled and met Fritz Haber (german gas warfar pioneer)
Prandtl and Meyer
It would be difficult to create the right mood under the present circumstances, but perhaps by accident another beautiful differential equation will come along again, as it once did when I worked with you. Letter from Meyer to Prandtl, May 5, 1918. Ref. no. GOAR:2647, DLR-Gottingen Archives
On Lift
It’s easy to explain how a rocket works, but explaining how a wing works takes a rocket scientist Philippe Spalart, Boeing Technical Fellow