Quotes by Sir Arthur Eddington

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

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

I believe there are 15 747 724 136 275 002 577 605 653 961 181 555 468 044 717 914 527 116 709 366 231 425 076 185 631 031 296 protons in the universe and the same number of electrons.

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

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

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.

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

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

Life would be stunted and narrow if we could feel no significance in the world around us beyond that which can be weighed and measured with the tools of the physicist or described by the metrical symbols of the mathematician.

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.

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

Proof is the idol before whom the pure mathematician tortures himself.

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

Shuffling is the only thing which Nature cannot undo.

The mathematics is not there till we put it there.

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

The solution goes on famously; but just as we have got rid of all the other unknowns, behold! V disappears as well, and we are left with the indisputable but irritating conclusion: 0 = 0. This is a favourite device that mathematical equations resort to, when we propound stupid questions.

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.

We have found a strange footprint on the shores of the unknown. We have devised profound theories, one after another, to account for its origins. At last, we have succeeded in reconstructing the creature that made the footprint. And lo! It is our own.

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.

Not only is the universe stranger than we imagine, it is stranger than we can imagine.

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

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

Something unknown is doing we don't know what.

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.

For the truth of the conclusions of physical science, observation is the supreme Court of Appeal. It does not follow that every item which we confidently accept as physical knowledge has actually been certified by the Court; our confidence is that it would be certified by the Court if it were submitted. But it does follow that every item of physical knowledge is of a form which might be submitted to the Court. It must be such that we can specify (although it may be impracticable to carry out) an observational procedure which would decide whether it is true or not. Clearly a statement cannot be tested by observation unless it is an assertion about the results of observation. Every item of physical knowledge must therefore be an assertion of what has been or would be the result of carrying out a specified observational procedure.

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