有學問語錄

Posted by tjwei on 星期六, 10月 13, 2007 with No comments
關於數學、科學、研究的語錄

As far as the properties of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain: and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality.
Albert Einstein

"Obvious" is the most dangerous word in mathematics.
Eric Temple Bell

A talk in mathematics should be one of four things: beautiful, deep, surprising... or short.
Michel Mendès France, remark, c. 1986

There are only two kinds of modern mathematics books — those you cannot read beyond the first page and those you cannot read beyond the first sentence.
C. N. Yang

Factorials were someone's attempt to make math look exciting.
Steven Wright

A circle is the longest distance to the same point.
Tom Stoppard

There is very little flexibility in the behavior of the Universe. What it does once, it does again.
Isaac Asimov

What makes the Universe so hard to comprehend is that there's nothing to compare it with.
Ashleigh Brilliant

If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe.
Carl Sagan, Cosmos (1980)

The whole of science is nothing more than a refinement of everyday thinking.
Albert Einstein, Out of My Later Years (1950)

Science is a long history of learning how not to fool ourselves.
Richard Feynman, quoted in K. C. Cole, The Universe and the Teacup: The Mathematics of Truth and Beauty (1998)

The main object of all science is the freedom and happiness of man.
Thomas Jefferson

Science is always simple and always profound. It is only the half-truths that are dangerous.
George Bernard Shaw, The Doctor's Dilemma (1913)

The experimenter who does not know what he is looking for will never understand what he finds.
Claude Bernard

I have little patience with scientists who take a board of wood, look for its thinnest part, and drill a great number of holes where drilling is easy.
Albert Einstein

Every hour a scientist spends trying to raise funds is an hour lost from important thought and research.
Isaac Asimov

"Research" means "to search again." Why not? Sometimes, a new interpretation emerges that is of vast importance.
Isaac Asimov

Basic research is what I am doing when I don't know what I am doing.
Wernher von Braun

In research the front line is almost always in a fog.
Francis Crick, What Mad Pursuit: A Personal View of Scientific Discovery (1988)

Results! Why, man, I have gotten a lot of results. I know several thousand things that won't work.
Thomas Edison

If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it?
Albert Einstein

The final results [of his work on the theory of relativity] appear almost simple; any intelligent undergraduate can understand them without much trouble. But the years of searching in the dark for a truth that one feels, but cannot express; the intense effort and the alternations of confidence and misgiving, until one breaks through to clarity and understanding, are only known to him who has himself experienced them.
Albert Einstein

The mere formulation of a problem is far more often essential than its solution, which may be merely a matter of mathematical or experimental skill. To raise new questions, new possibilities, to regard old problems from a new angle requires creative imagination and marks real advances in science.
Albert Einstein

If we want an answer from nature, we must put our questions in acts, not words, and the acts may take us to curious places. Some questions were answered in the laboratory, others in mines, others in a hospital where a surgeon pushed tubes in my arteries to get blood samples, others on top of Pike's Peak in the Rocky Mountains, or in a diving dress on the bottom of the sea. That is one of the things I like about scientific research. You never know where it will take you next.
J. B. S. [John Burdon Sanderson] Haldane

Why think? Why not try the experiment?
John Hunter, letter to Edward Jenner

Copy from one, it's plagiarism; copy from two, it's research.
Wilson Mizner

For God's sake, stop researching for a while and begin to think.
Sir Walter Hamilton Moberly, The Crisis in the University (1949)

I didn't think; I experimented.
Wilhelm Roentgen

We haven't the money, so we've got to think.
Ernest Rutherford, in R. V. Jones, Bulletin of the Institute of Physics 1962, 13, 102

The joy of research must be found in doing, since every other harvest is uncertain.
Theobald Smith

Research means going out into the unknown with the hope of finding something new to bring home. If you know in advance what you are going to do, or even to find there, then it is not research at all: then it is only a kind of honourable occupation.
Albert Szent-Györgi, Perspectives in Biology and Medicine (1971)

If a research project is not worth doing at all, it is not worth doing properly.
Unknown, Journal of Irreproducible Results 1961, 9, 43

The difference between science and magic is that magicians usually know what they're doing.
Ashleigh Brilliant

There are two kinds of truth; the truth that lights the way and the truth that warms the heart. The first of these is science, and the second is art. . . . Without art science would be as useless as a pair of high forceps in the hands of a plumber. Without science art would become a crude mess of folklore and emotional quackery.
Raymond Chandler, The Notebooks of Raymond Chandler (1976)

Everything should be as simple as possible — but not simpler.
Albert Einstein

Most of the fundamental ideas of science are essentially simple, and may, as a rule, be expressed in a language comprehensible to everyone.
Albert Einstein

The only source of knowledge is experience.
Albert Einstein

There is no logical way to the discovery of these elemental laws. There is only the way of intuition, which is helped by a feeling for the order lying behind the appearance.
Albert Einstein

You do not really understand something unless you can explain it to your grandmother.
Albert Einstein

The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is incomprehensible.
Albert Einstein, quoted in his obituary (April 19, 1955)

I think and think for months, for years; 99 times the conclusion is false, but the hundredth time I am right.
Albert Einstein, quoted in Banesh Hoffman, Albert Einstein, Creator and Rebel (1972)

Nothing is too wonderful to be true if it be consistent with the laws of nature.
Michael Faraday

This is common to all our laws; they all turn out to be simple things, although complex in their actual actions.
Richard Feynman, The Character of Physical Law (1965)

Being a language, mathematics may be used not only to inform but also, among other things, to seduce.
Benoit Mandelbrot

The aim of science is not to open the door to infinite wisdom, but to set a limit to infinite error.
Bertolt Brecht

Science is everything we understand well enough to explain to a computer. Art is everything else.
David Knuth

There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory which states that this has already happened.
Douglas Adams

A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools.
Douglas Adams. Mostly Harmless

All of physics is either impossible or trivial. It is impossible until you understand it, and then it becomes trivial.
Ernest Rutherford

If we are to achieve results never before accomplished, we must employ methods never before attempted.
Francis Bacon

You cannot teach a man anything; you can only help him find it within himself.
Galileo Galilei

he most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds the most discoveries, is not "Eureka!" but "That′s funny..."
Isaac Asimov

If I have seen further than others, it is by standing upon the shoulders of giants.
Isaac Newton

If the brain were simple enough for us to understand it, we would be too simple to understand it.
Ken Hill


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