Collection of quotes
Religious figures
- “Ἀπόδοτε οὖν τὰ Καίσαρος Καίσαρι καὶ τὰ τοῦ Θεοῦ τῷ Θεῷ” –Jesus, deftly avoiding a trap question (Matthew 22:21, translated usually as “Render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s, and unto God the things that are God’s”)
- “But he answered one of them, ‘Friend, I am not being unfair to you. Didn’t you agree to work for a denarius? Take your pay and go. I want to give the man who was hired last the same as I gave you. Don’t I have the right to do what I want with my own money? Or are you envious because I am generous?’” –Jesus‘ parable of vineyard workers, Matthew 20:13–15
Physicists
- “Notice the variety of specific meanings attaching to the term Δt in these examples: In Example 1 it’s a period of oscillation; in Example 2 it’s the time it takes a particle to pass a point; in Example 3 it’s the lifetime of an unstable particle. In every case, however, Δt is the time it takes for the system to undergo substantial change. It is often said that the uncertainty principle means that energy is not strictly conserved in quantum mechanics—that you’re allowed to ‘borrow’ energy ΔE, as long as you ‘pay it back’ in a time
; the greater the violation, the briefer the period over which it can occur. There are many legitimate readings of the energy-time uncertainty principle, but this is not one of them. Nowhere does quantum mechanics license violation of energy conservation, and certainly no such authorization entered into the derivation of Equation 3.151. But the uncertainty principle is extraordinarily robust: It can be misused without leading to seriously incorrect results, and as a consequence physicists are in the habit applying it rather carelessly.” –David Griffiths in Introduction to Quantum Mechanics Sec. 3.4
- “In general, when you hear a physicist invoke the uncertainty principle, keep a hand on your wallet.” – David Griffiths, in Introduction to Elementary Particles, problem 1.2.
- “The scientist’s instinct is to speak freely with colleagues and share ideas; concern about patents, however, discourages openness because it can obscure precisely who invented what, a determination that is the main point and legal requirement of a patent. Cooperation and free discourse are hallmarks of civility and almost inevitably enhance collective creativity; but when financial rewards from patents are large, they may set colleagues on courses of secrecy and nasty collisions in court. There are thus incompatibilities between the optimum culture of science and the labyrinths of patent law, in addition to some broad overlaps.” –Charles Townes, on patent law, in How the Laser Happened: Adventures of a Scientist
, chapter titled “The Patent Game”
- “Well, I’d say that also our friend Dirac has got a religion and the first commandment of this religion is ‘God does not exist and Paul Dirac is his prophet’.” –Wolfgang Pauli, as quoted by Werner Heisenberg as saying in a conversation
- “There is a sense among many experimentalists that theorists are a bunch of irresponsible little spoiled brats who get to sit around all day, having all these fun ideas, drinking espresso and goofing off, with next to no accountability.” –Nima Arkani-Hamed, Harvard University, The New Yorker, May 14, 2007
Free software advocates
- “The kernel team has never been loath to replace code when necessary, and never slow to handle the job, no matter how large the item to be replaced. Just look at the replacement of Bitkeeper with “git”, a big job that took a ground-up rewrite and yet was working in five weeks. So, code belonging to GPL3-objectors would be swiftly dealt with.” –Bruce Perens
Economists
; the earliest versions of the quote goes at least back to 1950s