Arthur Eddington Quotes

There once was a brainy baboon, Who always breathed down a bassoon, For he said, It appears That in billions of years I shall certainly hit on a tune.

If an army of monkeys were strumming on typewriters, they might write all the books in the British Museum.

The idea of a universal mind or Logos would be, I think, a fairly plausible inference from the present state of scientific theory.

Whatever else there may be in our nature, responsibility toward truth is one of its attributes.

The pursuit of truth in science transcends national boundaries. It takes us beyond hatred and anger and fear. It is the best of us.

You cannot disturb the tiniest petal of a flower without the troubling of a distant star.

It is impossible to trap modern physics into predicting anything with perfect determinism because it deals with probabilities from the outset.

We used to think that if we knew one, we knew two, because one and one are two. We are finding that we must learn a great deal more about 'and'.

Do not put too much confidence in experimental results until they have been confirmed by theory.

I ask you to look both ways. For the road to a knowledge of the stars leads through the atom; and important knowledge of the atom has been reached through the stars.

It is reasonable to hope that in the not too distant future we shall be competent to understand so simple a thing as a star.

In Einstein's theory of relativity the observer is a man who sets out in quest of truth armed with a measuring-rod. In quantum theory he sets out with a sieve.

We are bits of stellar matter that got cold by accident, bits of a star gone wrong.

The electron, as it leaves the atom, crystallises out of Schrodinger's mist like a genie emerging from his bottle.

Oh leave the Wise our measures to collate. One thing at least is certain, light has weight. One thing is certain and the rest debate. Light rays, when near the Sun, do not go straight.

Every body continues in its state of rest or uniform motion in a straight line, except insofar as it doesn't.

Time is the supreme Law of nature.

The mathematics is not there till we put it there.

So far as physics is concerned, time's arrow is a property of entropy alone.

If your theory is found to be against the second law of thermodynamics I give you no hope; there is nothing for it but to collapse in deepest humiliation.

Proof is an idol before which the mathematician tortures himself.

Asked in 1919 whether it was true that only three people in the world understood the theory of general relativity, [Eddington] allegedly replied: "Who's the third?"

Shuffling is the only thing which Nature cannot undo.

Probably the simplest hypothesis... is that there may be a slow process of annihilation of matter.

Falling in love is one of the activities forbidden that tiresome person, the consistently reasonable man.

We often think that when we have completed our study of one we know all about two, because 'two' is 'one and one.' We forget that we still have to make a study of 'and.'

It is a primitive form of thought that things exist or do not exist.

Events do not happen; they are just there, and we come across them.

Human life is proverbially uncertain; few things are more certain than the solvency of a life-insurance company.

The word reality frightens me.

We have found that where science has progressed the farthest, the mind has but regained from nature that which the mind put into nature.

There was a time when we wanted to be told what an electron is. The question was never answered. No familiar conceptions can be woven around the electron; it belongs to the waiting list.

I don't believe any experiment until it is confirmed by theory. I find this is a witty inversion of "conventional" wisdom.

A hundred thousand million Stars make one Galaxy; A hundred thousand million Galaxies make one Universe. The figures may not be very trustworthy, but I think they give a correct impression.

Electrical force is defined as something which causes motion of electrical charge; an electrical charge is something which exerts electric force.

What is possible in the Cavendish Laboratory may not be too difficult in the sun.

An electron is no more (and no less) hypothetical than a star. Nowadays we count electrons one by one in a Geiger counter, as we count the stars one by one on a photographic plate.

Don't believe the results of experiments until they're confirmed by theory.

It is also a good rule not to put overmuch confidence in the observational results that are put forward until they are confirmed by theory.

In the most modern theories of physics probability seems to have replaced aether as "the nominative of the verb 'to undulate'."

There is no space without aether, and no aether which does not occupy space.

The quest of the absolute leads into the four-dimensional world.

Never accept a fact until it has been verified by theory.

For the truth of the conclusions of physical science, observation is the supreme Court of Appeal.

What we makes of the world must be largely dependent on the sense-organs that we happen to possess. How the world must have changed since the man came to rely on his eyes rather than his nose.

Who will observe the observers?

Schrödinger's wave-mechanics is not a physical theory, but a dodge - and a very good dodge too.

In any attempt to bridge the domains of experience belonging to the spiritual and physical sides of nature, time occupies the key position.

Philosophically, the notion of a beginning of the present order of Nature is repugnant to me ... I should like to find a genuine loophole.

Science is one thing, wisdom is another. Science is an edged tool, with which men play like children, and cut their own fingers.